Migrant deaths at the hands of ICE revive debate over training and body cameras

Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian and father, was unarmed and not the target of the operation. Still, an agent from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who stopped him on a street in Biddeford, Maine, opened fire and killed him. The magazine The Atlantic has reported that the officer who fired had only recently joined the agency, a detail that has renewed scrutiny of the accelerated training given to new recruits in the deportation apparatus, which now numbers about 22,000 officers and has been pushed by President Donald Trump.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not explained a detail that seems crucial: why the agent concluded Durán Guerrero posed a threat that justified lethal force. While it initially said the victim had used his vehicle “as a weapon,” a later DHS statement said only that the officer fired because he “feared for public safety” while the Colombian “was attempting to flee the scene.” Several videos of the incident that have emerged and circulated on social media cast doubt on that account. So far, the government has not revealed the officer’s identity or confirmed The Atlantic’s reporting.

Last week, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant, died after being shot by another ICE officer during a traffic stop in Houston, Texas. Neither the officer involved in that case nor the one who killed Durán Guerrero was wearing a body camera, even though the devices were supposed to be part of the standard equipment for most immigration officers conducting street operations, under a DHS commitment following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January. In the recent cases, the absence of those recordings makes it harder to reconstruct precisely what happened; nearby security camera footage, which is often partial, and witness accounts are the only elements so far helping to clarify events.

Amid a growing wave of questions and protests over these deaths, ICE ordered agents in its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division to temporarily suspend vehicle stops as a method for detaining immigrants, according to press reports citing federal officials. The instruction was to replace that tactic with other methods of locating and arresting people. Traffic-stop arrests had become one of ERO’s main tools to increase the number of detentions as people learned, for example, that they can refuse to open the door of their home to officers who do not show a warrant. In recent months the Trump administration had accelerated arrests, and ICE reached roughly 2,000 detentions per day.

A third incident on Tuesday intensified criticism on this issue. A 28-year-old man died after being struck by a tractor-trailer while fleeing immigration agents and other federal officers in Florida. The man was one of four occupants of a vehicle that stopped at a gas station in St. Augustine. According to authorities, when agents tried to detain them, all four ran. During the chase the man crossed a highway and was hit by a commercial truck, causing his death. While ICE is not directly responsible for this death, the climate of fear generated by its agents’ actions hangs over it.

Questions over training

In February, Ryan Schwank, a former ICE attorney and the agency’s former head of deportation officer training, publicly confirmed what many critics had warned about: that the instruction at the agency’s academy was insufficient. “I am here because I am duty-bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective and broken,” he said during a forum organized by two federal lawmakers.

What he revealed next was even more alarming: “On my first day, I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant. For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584-hour program.” He was referring to the Trump administration’s plan to recruit, train and deploy new immigration officers at an unprecedented pace, with the goal of doubling in a single year the number of officers dedicated to arrests and deportations, to about 22,000 personnel. During that time, recruits were expected to complete an intensive 42-day course.

It was not until June that DHS ordered that incoming agents — many of whom had joined through the accelerated training process — receive additional instruction. From that month, according to the directive, new cadets at the ICE academy in Georgia were to complete a roughly 71-day training program. It was not specified when that process would conclude.

“The training policy is going to change a bit, as we are going to address crowd control and adapt to current needs,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said during his testimony before Congress on June 2. “Nevertheless, all training is always subject to changes and adjustments,” he added.

Body cameras

After the recent deaths of immigrants in encounters with ICE officers, DHS again blamed Democratic lawmakers for the lack of body cameras among some of the officers involved in fatal shootings. In a statement the department said the absence of those devices occurred “due to the consecutive government shutdowns caused by the Democrats.” The first ended on February 3 and the second on April 30.

Even before the public commitment by former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem that immigration agents would wear body cameras, ICE had established a policy in January 2024, during the Biden administration, that requires most of its officers to wear them during “all aspects of law enforcement activity.” However, in practice, implementation remains uneven: many agents still do not wear them.

The changes announced by DHS have not eased criticism from those who question the use of force by immigration officers. “The pattern is always the same,” Democratic Representative Sylvia García of Houston told CNN, referring to explanations offered after the two recent shootings. “If ICE has the option to shoot anyone for public safety reasons, what does that mean?” the lawmaker asked. “If you drive recklessly and violate public safety laws, could they decide to shoot you?”

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