ICE Killed Two Men in Eight Days and Isn't Stopping

Trump gave a 30-minute speech warning about voter fraud after firing all the members of the Election Assistance Commission

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I don’t have many jokes for you today. Three people were killed during ICE vehicle stops in one week. The administration’s response was to do more of them. We need to talk about this.

ICE Killed Two Men in Eight Days Using the Same Excuse

On July 8, ICE agents in Houston attempted a vehicle stop on Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father and immigrant from Mexico. An agent shot him dead. DHS said Salgado Araujo tried to use his van as a weapon. Passengers in the van say that didn’t happen.

On July 13, ICE agents in Biddeford, Maine, pulled over Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old father from Colombia. An agent shot into his vehicle and killed him. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Senator Angus King that Guerrero had tried to use his car as a weapon. DHS has provided no evidence to support this.

Two men. Two vehicle stops. Two fatal shootings. The same justification both times, word for word: he tried to use his car as a weapon. This is the same language DHS used to justify the killing of Renée Good months earlier in Minneapolis.

This is now the eighth fatal ICE shooting of Trump’s second term. At least 52 people have died in ICE custody over that same period, which Human Rights Watch called a “soaring mortality rate.”

After Guerrero’s death, DHS quietly told congressional offices it would pause vehicle stops. Senator King’s office confirmed the planned shift to NPR on Tuesday. It looked like someone inside the machine had decided this was unsustainable.

It lasted less than a day.

Trump posted on Truth Social that ICE could not give up “one of its most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Within hours, the pause was dead. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Thursday that vehicle stops are continuing and that “verbal guidance has been given to all field offices across the country.”

Meanwhile, on Tuesday in St. Augustine, Florida, a man was fatally struck by a tractor-trailer while running from an ICE vehicle stop. That’s three people dead in connection with these stops in a single week. The administration’s response is to do more of them.

The Trump administration has refused to cooperate with local investigators who are seeking to prevent ICE from deporting witnesses before they can testify. In a functioning country, that sentence would be the biggest story of the month.

Trump’s Primetime Election Speech Was a Dud — and a Warning

The president of the United States requested primetime airtime on all major networks Thursday night to present what he called “really big news” on elections. Press Secretary Leavitt promised it would “shock you.”

It did not shock anyone.

Trump presented a series of declassified documents that he claimed had been hidden from both him and the public, proving that America’s election systems are “catastrophically short” of the standards required. CNN reviewed the documents and found they largely discussed previously known potential vulnerabilities from a 2021 intelligence community assessment, a declassified version of which was provided to Trump himself on January 7, 2021.

NPR noted that Trump provided no evidence of a single fraudulent vote cast in any election.

He accused China of interfering in American elections. He pushed for the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The bill has stalled in the Senate, with opponents pointing out that voter fraud is statistically nonexistent and that millions of eligible citizens don’t have ready access to the required documents.

When a reporter asked Leavitt whether Trump would accept the results of the 2026 midterms, she did not answer. She told the reporter to watch the speech.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the address an attempt to undermine the midterms before a single vote has been cast. Republican insiders told Politico they wished the president would talk about the economy instead of the 2020 election. Former FBI officials said they feared the speech was part of a broader attack on democratic institutions.

The biggest threat to election integrity just gave a primetime speech about election integrity. The next one won’t be a speech.

The Agency That Certifies Voting Has Zero Members

If you wanted to steal an election, step one would be to fire everyone whose job it is to make sure you can’t. Anyway, here’s what happened on July 9th.

Trump fired the two remaining Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission by email. He requested the resignation of the sole remaining Republican. The fourth seat was already vacant after its occupant left for the Heritage Foundation in April.

The EAC is a bipartisan federal commission created after the 2000 election debacle. It certifies voting systems. It distributes federal election grants to states. It maintains the national voter registration form. Many states won’t purchase voting equipment unless it’s been EAC-certified.

It now has zero commissioners. It cannot hold a vote. It cannot certify a machine. It cannot update guidance. It is frozen, four months before a national election.

The firings were the first use of the Supreme Court’s expanded presidential removal power from the Slaughter decision in late June. The White House said the president “reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections.”

Read that again. He removed every member of the election security agency because they weren’t “aligned” with his version of election security. Then he went on national television to say the system is broken.

This is why independent media exists. Not to tell you what the president said in a speech, but to show you what happened the week before the speech and to connect the dots.

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