‘Turning Up the Heat on the Streets’
The Atlantic · LC · trust 46/100
Ryan Murphy / Getty July 20, 2026, 11 AM ET Share Save Listen − 1.0 x + Seek 0:00 20:58 Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts
Friday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was asked at a press conference about his previous comments of “turning down the temperature.” This was a reasonable question given that two men, one in Texas and one in Maine, were recently shot and killed by immigration agents who approached them in their cars. A few days earlier, following conversations with Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Mullin had said he was temporarily suspending traffic stops, which certainly sounded like a temperature turndown. But then Donald Trump promptly stomped on that idea: “We CANNOT give up on I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” the president wrote on Truth Social. So in response to the question about temperature Friday, Mullin gave the answer his boss required: “I turn down the temperature with you guys,” he said, pointing to the reporters, and continued, “we’re turning up the heat on the streets.”
Right now immigration enforcement is in a combustible place. Both of the recent killings involved traffic stops, which immigration officers have less experience and training in than other law enforcement. The Maine killing involved a new recruit who, according to emerging reports, had a history of violent behavior and serious mental-health issues. Since the killing of two American citizens in Minnesota in January, approval for Trump’s immigration-enforcement tactics has dipped. And yet he is getting pressure from his supporters to stay firm. Despite the recent killings, the administration says it is still trying for 2,000 immigration arrests a day.
Our guest today is the staff writer Nick Miroff, who covers immigration. We talk about the details of the shootings, the problem with the traffic stop, and the direction Mullin seems to be taking the agency.
Nick Miroff: These ICE officers are swooping in out of nowhere, in some cases trying to pin the vehicle of the person that they want to arrest. And, you know, if they do this hundreds of times a day across the country in multiple cities, it stands to reason that in some cases the people they’re after are going to panic. And if they panic and try to drive away, does that, you know, justify killing them, you know? And the answer is no, of course, but it points to the inherent risks of these kinds of tactics by ICE officers.
Hanna Rosin: The recent killings of two men—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine—by immigration officers have put the Department of Homeland Security back in the place that Secretary Markwayne Mullin was trying to avoid.
Markwayne Mullin (from his Senate confirmation hearing on March 18): My goal, in six months, is that we’re not in the lead story every single day.
So, the administration didn’t want to be on the front page, but it didn’t want to give up on its aggressive immigration agenda either. Recently it’s ramped up immigration arrests to 2,000 a day. And Friday Mullin said they are staying the course.
Mullin (from his press conference on July 17): We’re turning up the heat on the streets. We’re out there working harder than we ever have because we’ve empowered our law enforcement to do their job.
Many of the recent arrests were traffic stops—that’s how the men in Texas and Maine were killed. And in Maine, the officer involved was a new recruit with, reports say, a history of violent behavior and serious mental-health issues.
So they are definitely back in the headlines.
I’m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic . Joining me today to talk about the two recent killings and about DHS Secretary Mullin, is Nick Miroff, who covers immigration for The Atlantic .
Rosin: So after Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed in Minnesota, there was a lot of pushback against the way immigration enforcement was being done, including by Republicans, including by some MAGA people. So how did we get back here again with two killings by immigration officers in such a short period?
Miroff: Yeah, well, there was a kind of a broader pullback, right? I mean, the administration sent Tom Homan into Minneapolis to clean things up. The president ousted Kristi Noem. Markwayne Mullin came in as the new DHS secretary, signaling that he wanted things to be quieter, to keep DHS out of the headlines. And yet the calls on the right started, you know, throughout the spring were growing for them to intensify their ICE operations. People were seeing the ICE arrests and deportation numbers lower than they had been prior to Minneapolis. And Markwayne Mullin as well as “border czar” Tom Homan were getting accused on the right of backing off of Trump’s promises to carry out the largest, you know, deportation campaign in U.S. history.
And so what we’ve seen in the last few weeks was a rapid intensification of ICE activity. They have been arresting about twice as many people as they were doing a few months ago. And they were trying to do it more quietly. It didn’t look like Minneapolis, because it wasn’t all concentrated in one city. It wasn’t Border Patrol agents, you know, sweeping through neighborhoods. It was the kind of targeted enforcement that Tom Homan signaled that he wanted, to double down on the kind of tactics that ICE has always done.
But this time it’s been more focused on vehicle stops, not on homes. It’s on vehicle stops. And these vehicle stops are inherently dangerous for many of the reasons that we have just seen.
Rosin: What do we know about the details of these shootings so far? Because we haven’t had the kind of videos emerge like we did in Minnesota, where we could see clearly what happened at the moment of shooting.
Miroff: You know, I’d say one thing else about that, which is, you know, if you think about Minneapolis, because every everyone was so stirred up and…
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