People gather near the scene at 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026. This is the third shooting in as many weeks. (Photo: Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian citizen with legal work authorization, on July 13 in Maine, making him the 22nd person shot by federal immigration officials during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Nearly all of those 22 incidents — 19 — involved Department of Homeland Security officers shooting at people in vehicles during traffic stops, a key link, according to a State Newsroom review of news reports and documents. Meetings spanned the country, from Colorado to Texas, Oregon and New Jersey.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, when he promised to aggressively crack down on immigration, federal immigration officials have killed six people, including three U.S. citizens. Four fatalities occurred during traffic stops.
DHS is the second immigrant in a week to be murdered by ICE officers during a traffic stop following Guerrero’s death suspend traffic stop enforcement. But Trump quickly ordered the department to do so abandon these plans.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that officials would conduct vehicle-related inspections “to continue the deportation campaign.”
The agency has enormous financial resources. Last year, congressional Republicans used a legislative maneuver to allocate approximately $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detention and deportation, without the need for Democratic support. GOP lawmakers did the same this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and the Border Patrol through September 2029.
Following the ICE shooting in Biddeford, Maine’s entire congressional delegation called for an independent investigation, and Republican Senator Susan Collins called for an end to vehicle enforcement.
Thursday’s report of the American Civil Liberties Union identified patterns of misconduct by immigration agents during Trump’s second term, identifying 432 cases in which agents used or threatened to operate force against immigrants and bystanders.
The report reviewed more than 1,200 incidents in eight states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and New Mexico.
The ACLU found that people and passengers were pulled from cars in 76 traffic enforcement cases; windows were broken 47 times; officers rammed people’s cars 14 times; and hit people with cars six times.
What happened next
Moments after the 22 shootings, DHS quickly accused those shot at of using vehicles as weapons against immigration officers.
However, independent video often contradicts this narrative.
In at least five cases brought by DHS, charges were dismissed after the department accused U.S. citizens and immigrants shot by federal agents as the aggressors.
In August 2025, Francisco Longoria, a Mexican national, was driving his vehicle in San Bernardino, California, when federal immigration agents in unmarked cars attempted to stop him. He escaped and the agents shot at him.
The Justice Department accused him of attempting to harm agents, but prosecutors could not defend DHS’s actions the charges were dismissed. Longoria was not injured.
Marimar Martinez was designated a domestic terrorist by DHS and indicted after Border Patrol agents shot her five times in a car in October 2025 during the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign in Chicago. The Justice Department withdrew its charges against Martinez, a US citizen, after the Trump administration accused her of using her car as a weapon.
When the president initially directed immigration agents to the nation’s capital, U.S. citizen Phillip M. Brown was detained by law enforcement, including an immigration officer who shot at his vehicle. Brown was not injured in the October 2025 shooting, but was charged with fleeing law enforcement. US Attorney’s Office refused to initiate proceedings in this case.
During the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation operation in Minneapolis in January that resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens, Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot and killed by a federal agent in his home. DHS accused Cesar Sosa-Celis of hitting an immigration officer with a broom handle, but Cesar Sosa-Celis denied it and surveillance video supported the federal government’s claims.
He was the immigration agent who shot Cesar Sosa-Celis pursued by local Minnesota authorities and arrested in May for falsely reporting a crime and assault.
On July 7, ICE officers murdered a 52-year-old man in Houston Lorenzo Salgado Araujoclaiming he tried to run over the agents as had happened in other incidents.
Salgado Araujo was driving several other people to work that morning when immigration officers approached his van. DHS said he was not considered a person of interest.
The FBI requested a search warrant to confiscate plastic bags containing “crystal-like substances” for testing for methamphetamine, – reports the Texas Tribune. One of the lawyers representing Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was in the van during the shooting, said it was granulated salt.
A gloomy start to the year
The highest number of people shot by federal immigration agents occurred in January. Three of the five people shot by ICE and Border Patrol officers were in Minnesota, and two of them were fatal.
Both deaths occurred in Minneapolis, where the Trump administration has mounted an aggressive deportation campaign targeting a city that has a enormous Somali refugee population.
This month, federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, and shot and wounded Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Good was killed in her vehicle, causing then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to label her a domestic terrorist. DHS accused Good of using her SUV as a weapon, but an independent video He did not support this accusation.
A week later, federal immigration officials shot and killed intensive care nurse Pretti, who was recording agents on her phone and helping a woman they were pushing. Noem again called him a domestic terrorist and said he was attacking agents, but many videos shot from different angles don’t show this.
