The retired sheriff’s commander points to a cited New York Times analysis, two July deaths where DHS said the men were not intended targets, and the absence of required field body cameras.
A USA TODAY opinion piece by retired San Diego County Sheriff’s Office commander David Myers frames the fight over ICE less as a dispute over immigration policy than as a test of law-enforcement accountability after deadly force.
Myers’ central claim is sharply phrased: according to USA TODAY, he says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “not law enforcement” and is “a militia with a badge.” His argument rests on shootings, vehicle-stop tactics, unanswered questions from DHS and what he sees as silence from local police leaders.
An accountability argument comes first
Myers spent 35 years in law enforcement, retired as a commander with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office and says he has investigated officer-involved shootings and taught use of force. He uses that background to measure ICE against the standards he says police agencies should face after lethal encounters.
The issue, in his telling, is not whether federal immigration agents have legal authority. It is whether force by federal agents is followed by the kind of documentation, review and public explanation that can sustain law-enforcement legitimacy.
That is why body cameras, local jurisdiction and independent scrutiny sit at the center of his critique, rather than merely the rhetoric around ICE.
The pattern Myers cites
Per a New York Times analysis cited in the USA TODAY opinion piece, immigration agents have shot at or shot at least 23 people since January 2025. Six people were killed, including three U.S. citizens, according to that analysis as described by Myers.
Myers wrote that nearly every fatal case involved agents firing at people in vehicles. He treats that detail as significant because many police agencies have restricted shooting at moving vehicles, given the risk to drivers, passengers and bystanders and the difficulty of judging an immediate threat.
After the two July deaths, ICE ordered agents to pause most vehicle stops nationwide, according to Myers. Border czar Tom Homan called the pause a “short-term review,” a description Myers uses to argue that the agency’s vehicle-stop practices deserve closer scrutiny.
The July deaths behind the dispute
The first case Myers highlighted happened July 7 in Houston, where federal agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52. According to the DHS account summarized in the USA TODAY piece, agents had been watching another address and believed a van driver resembled a target. DHS later said Salgado Araujo was not the person agents were seeking.
The second case came July 13 in Biddeford, Maine, where an ICE agent shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian man. DHS again said he was not the intended target, according to the account Myers cited.
Myers wrote that DHS described both deadly encounters using the phrase “weaponized” vehicle. He also said witness accounts and photographs raise questions about the federal narratives, including bullet holes in Durán Guerrero’s car and damage to Salgado Araujo’s van that he argues appears more consistent with being struck by ICE vehicles. Those claims remain part of a disputed public record, not settled findings.
For the Houston shooting, Myers wrote that DHS has not said who agents were actually seeking, whether that person was found or whether Salgado Araujo’s van was one of the vehicles agents had been watching. He noted that The Texas Tribune asked DHS about those issues and that the department declined to answer.
Body cameras are the missing record
The USA TODAY piece states that DHS still does not require its agents to wear body cameras in the field. Myers treats that absence as a major reason the two July shootings have become a broader accountability issue.
Body-camera footage would not automatically resolve every factual dispute. But without it, families, local officials and the public can be left weighing agency statements against witness accounts, photographs and later investigative summaries.
Myers also alleges wider structural gaps around ICE field operations, including inconsistent body-camera rules, inadequate standardized use-of-force restraints, limited independent civilian review of shootings and unclear boundaries between immigration sweeps and public-safety policing.
What DHS says ICE is
DHS describes ICE as a federal agency whose duties are carried out through more than 400 statutes and focus on immigration enforcement, humane detention, preventing terrorism and combating the illegal movement of people and goods.
Myers does not dispute that ICE has federal power. His objection is to how that power is being used and reviewed when agents conduct operations in communities and use lethal force.
In his view, calling an agency law enforcement requires more than badges, weapons and statutory authority. It requires a system that can explain and justify force, especially when the people killed were not the intended targets.
Why local police leaders are part of the story
Myers’ critique also targets police chiefs and sheriffs who, he argues, should not treat federal shootings in their cities as beyond local concern.
He contrasted Houston, where he wrote that police said there was “nothing that we can do” about a federal killing in the city, with Hennepin County in Minnesota. According to Myers, Hennepin County prosecutors have brought criminal charges against federal agents this year while asserting local jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed in the community.
That contrast supports his broader point about local responsibility. Federal officers have federal authority and legal protections, but Myers argues they are not automatically beyond local criminal accountability if force crosses legal lines.
The unresolved questions remain basic: what evidence supports the “weaponized” vehicle descriptions, whether DHS will release fuller findings, whether body-camera rules will change and whether local law-enforcement leaders will publicly challenge federal force used on their streets.
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