AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Twenty-six-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. Fifty-two-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Thirty-seven-year-old Alex Pretti and Renee Good, also 37.
CHANG: These are the four people who have been shot and killed by federal immigration officers since the beginning of 2026. Pretti and Good, both U.S. citizens, died just weeks apart in January in Minneapolis. They were shot as that city was engulfed in protests against the Trump administration's Operation Metro Surge. Fast-forward six months, and that is when Duran Guerrero, an immigrant from Colombia, was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. Six days earlier in Houston, Federal Immigration officers shot Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, also during a traffic stop.
DETROW: So what is going on? Is this normal and should this be happening? These are a few of the questions we are going to put to Gil Kerlikowske. He was a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner during the Obama administration. He also led police departments in both Seattle and Buffalo.
Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
GIL KERLIKOWSKE: Thank you.
DETROW: Let's start with this. Does the string of fatal shootings this year by federal immigration officers - does it alarm you?
KERLIKOWSKE: Well, it's far outside the numbers that would have occurred in the past. So it would be alarming. And if you were a police chief in a big city, you would be very alarmed.
DETROW: Obviously, nobody ever wants anybody to be shot and killed by officers, but what is normal? What is it at the expected rate? And how does this year compare to that?
KERLIKOWSKE: Well, there's no real expected rate because it can vary much by the city, by the density, by the population, et cetera. But for this federal agency to have this number of fatal encounters is alarming, and it should be concerning to everyone, particularly given the tactics that have been used that have led to these shootings.
DETROW: I'm curious, do you think it's more of the tactics that are leading to these incidents or just the fact that so many more actions are taking place?
KERLIKOWSKE: Well, you have a lot of actions taking place, and that means that you've got more potential for a violent encounter. But when people examine - experts like myself and others examine the tactics, they are so far outside the standard practices and policies of any professional law enforcement agency that it shocks the conscience.
DETROW: Walk me through some of those specific tactics that you're most concerned about.
KERLIKOWSKE: So you don't approach a vehicle and make a traffic stop by boxing it in. In law enforcement, that would be called a felony stop. That means that you have probable cause that that person in that car is wanted for a felony, and that's the kind of tactic that you would use. All too often, these same tactics are being used, and they're even not against the target that they were intended. The other thing is that law enforcement officers are trained in communities, rural and suburban and a city, not to get in front of a vehicle, not to put your hands inside a vehicle. And yet, we see repeatedly these ICE agents and Border Patrol agents stand in front of the vehicle.
DETROW: And several times now, including in some of these latest incidents, the initial justification from ICE, from Homeland Security is that the person in the vehicle tried to use it as a weapon. That's the allegation. Do you think that entire incident could be avoided if officers were taking a different approach to these vehicles?
KERLIKOWSKE: Absolutely. And we've seen that. The evidence is abundantly clear in cities across the country, where they have banned the shooting inside at a vehicle, an occupied vehicle. They have banned that, and you have seen arrests made. You have seen encounters occur in which violence doesn't happen. And so we know that the work that is done in these big cities could be appropriate for ICE, but they don't seem to be paying attention.
DETROW: From your point of view, with your expert vantage point, do you think this is because the officers involved have not been trained, or do you think this is a conscious decision to use these more aggressive tactics?
KERLIKOWSKE: I think that they haven't been trained to police in an urban environment. The Border Patrol works best on the border or within 25 miles of the border. They have no experience or expertise policing a city. ICE is very much the same way. That is not their training. And frankly, you could put them through weeks of training, and it wouldn't even begin to approximate what a city police officer goes through.
DETROW: What difference do body cameras make? Obviously, video footage made such a difference in figuring out what actually happened with Alex Pretti. And then we learned in this Houston incident that the officers didn't have body cameras.
KERLIKOWSKE: Well, the body cameras in police departments across the country - and when I was commissioner at CBP, we tested them with the Border Patrol. And although the technology wasn't quite up to what it could be, what it should be, the focus group that I talked to was - the Border Patrol agents thought they were fine because in the vast majority of circumstances, the body camera video would support what they were saying. And police departments - you have officers that won't go out on patrol unless they do have a body camera because they know that it's going to, in most cases, support their actions.
DETROW: One specific step that's apparently taking place is that, according to Senator Angus King - he told NPR that U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is going to pause nonurgent vehicle stops for now. Do you think that is a solid step forward? Do you think that makes a difference?
KERLIKOWSKE: Well, ever since Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Minneapolis, they have really tried to do their best to take themselves off the front pages. And, of course, that's, I think, not for any particular reason other than that they're very concerned about the midterm elections. And these videos that have gone viral, these Kent State kind of videos, are going to come up again and again in November. So I'd love to say they're doing it for the right reasons. I'm just not sure.
DETROW: That is Gil Kerlikowske, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner under President Obama. Thank you so much for your time.
KERLIKOWSKE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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