ICE Continues to Engage in Immigration Enforcement Practices Resulting in Unwarranted Deaths

The New York County Lawyers Association’s (NYCLA) President Ronald C. Minkoff issued this statement regarding the Administration’s continued use of unlawful immigration enforcement procedures, resulting in two more killings of long-time American residents by ICE agents. 

This year saw multiple instances of ICE agents’ violent behavior without any apparent legal justification or authority. In January, during massive ICE enforcement raids in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ICE agents killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The Administration tried to justify the killings by offering immediate accounts of the events that video evidence soon showed to be false. And when these efforts at justification were exposed as being baseless, the Administration stonewalled the homicide investigations that Minnesota state law enforcement officials tried to mount, interfering with Minnesota’s right to conduct investigations into deaths on its soil.  NYCLA’s Rule of Law Task Force denounced that misconduct in a statement on January 26, 2026.

This month, that pattern of misconduct continued with two ICE killings – of Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas. Neither man fit any criminal profile. Mr. Araujo had lived in the US for 35 years, he owned a construction business, and he was stopped and killed while driving to work. Mr. Guererro had lived in the US for three years, he had a social security number and a work permit, and he was working in food delivery. He too was killed in the course of a vehicle stop.

Again, initial Administration reports described the victims as having posed some kind of threat. In Mr. Araujo’s case, the initial report was that he was trying to ram the immigration agents’ unmarked vehicle, but this was quickly contradicted by the other passengers in Mr. Araujo’s van and the fact that the agents fired their shots through the passenger window. With Mr. Guerrero, the initial claim was that he had tried to flee in his car from the immigration agents, and that an agent had fired at him “fearing for public safety,” but no basis for any such “fear” has been offered, and videos show the agents pulling Mr. Guerrero from the car and handcuffing him when he already may have been dying from gunshot wounds to his head.

As in Minneapolis, the Administration is hindering rather than helping to investigate the Araujo shooting. The DHS is seeking to deport the witnesses to Mr. Araujo’s shooting in the same manner that the agency did in February 2026, when it deported a witness to a homicide at an ICE detention facility. (July 15, 2026 Letter to the DHS Secretary and the Acting ICE Director by a group of Congresspersons). Similarly, when the DHS responded to the recent killings by imposing a moratorium on vehicle stops by ICE so they could retrain agents, the President immediately reversed that order. David J. Bier, Trump’s Order to Resume ICE Traffic Stops Means More Danger for the Public, Cato Institute (July 15, 2026)

After Minneapolis, there is a troubling sense of déjà vu in these killings. It appears that ICE agents are often underqualified and poorly trained and that ICE’s practices violate consensus policing protocols. See Ben Jones, ICE killing of driver in Minneapolis involved tactics many police departments warn against − but not ICE itself, The Conversation (January 8, 2026) and Emma Platoff, ‘They don’t know what they’re doing’: ICE agents aren’t following safety protocols during traffic stops, experts say, Boston Globe (July 18, 2026). But these recent cases may be of even greater concern because the Administration has failed to produce video evidence of the incidents from functioning body cameras on any of the ICE agents involved, and few other video records have yet emerged. 

The Supreme Court has determined that our Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibits the use of lethal force “unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 3 (1985) (emphasis added). These Fourth Amendment protections apply not just to American citizens, but to all persons who have developed enough of a connection with this country to be considered part of our American community. United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265 (1990).

Mr. Araujo and Mr. Guerrero were long-term members of our American community. Thus, they were entitled to these Constitutional protections, but they appear to have been denied them. I thus call on the Administration to immediately take two critical steps:

First, the Administration must conduct, as is customary, a full and fair joint federal/state criminal investigation of the killings of Mr. Araujo and of Mr. Guerrero to determine whether any federal agents violated the Fourth Amendment and whether any of those agents should be charged criminally under applicable state law. If charges are warranted, the Administration must cooperate with the state prosecution.

Second, in order to prevent further similar killings by ICE agents and undue danger to bystanders, the targets, and the agents, I call for the Administration to suspend all traffic stops of migrants’ vehicles until the Administration has adopted policies to ensure that all such stops will be conducted in conformity with our Constitution and consensus policing protocols, will always be filmed by body cameras so as to hold agents fully accountable for their actions if needed, and will be targeted only at specific, identified persons who (1) have been convicted of a violent felony, (2) have been issued deportation orders, and (3) cannot be apprehended and detained in some other manner. Taking these steps would help ensure that our nation’s immigration enforcement policies are implemented in compliance with the law and with good policing protocols. This would afford the American public, citizens and noncitizens alike, the protections we all deserve from undue risk of violence and Constitutional violations.

# # #

This statement has been issued by the NYCLA President. It has not been reviewed by NYCLA‘s full Board of Directors and does not necessarily represent its views.