ICE pauses most traffic stops amid uproar over 2 killings

0:02WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

0:05Ari Snider:It's a city, but it feels like a small town. And I think that's part of the shock of, you know, how could this happen? This surprise that this could happen in such a small and fairly quiet town. Outrage and shock after an immigration agent shot and killed a young man in Maine.

0:30It's Tuesday, July 14th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:40Today on the show, Haitians with temporary protected status will soon lose their ability to work in the U.S. That could mean staffing shortages at hospitals and nursing homes. Also, what you need to know about the foodborne parasite sickening people across the country. One of the things that makes this different is that these symptoms often last for weeks. So if someone has persistent diarrhea, especially now that we know that the outbreak is ongoing, they should contact their health provider because they can do a specific stool test to diagnose cyclospora. That's coming up in about 10 minutes.

1:16But first, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will stop making what it called non-urgent traffic stops after its agents shot and killed two people in the past week. That pause in traffic stops is according to the office of Senator Angus King of Maine, where protesters are back on the streets today after an ICE agent there shot and killed a Colombian man yesterday in the city of Biddeford, just south of Portland.

1:43Ari Snider:We want ICE out of Maine. This is the second time in a week that an ICE agent has fired into a vehicle and killed someone. Last week, an agent shot and killed a Mexican immigrant in Texas during a traffic stop there. For the latest from Maine, we called up Maine Public's Ari Snyder, who told T.C. Anadiering about the shooting that happened Monday morning. He was a 26-year-old man from Colombia. That's what we understand. He was shot while driving a vehicle after leaving a residence in a neighborhood. It's unclear if he was the target of the operation. Senator King's office said that they heard from DHS that he wasn't actually the target.

2:24Ari Snider:And we understand that he has a partner and a young child. So more news today now out of DHS, Department of Homeland Security. What more do we know about their move? They oversee ICE to order ICE to pause on all, quote, non-urgent vehicle stops. Well, you know, we're trying to make sense of this along with everyone else. We understand it came out very recently. But yeah, that's what they said, is that they're going to pause all non-urgent vehicle stops. We don't know exactly what that means. You know, I think, you know, what does non-urgent, what is the definition of that? But it could be fairly significant, especially for what we've seen here in Maine, where much of the enforcement, many of the arrests, and certainly some of the more high-profile arrests even before this shooting, happened on the roadways.

3:13Ari Snider:It was usually people getting pulled over while driving, and that led to a real fear and has led to a real fear among many immigrant communities in Maine of being out on the roads, of driving to school, of driving to work, of driving to doctor's offices. So we'll see what that translates to on the ground. Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins posted on X today that she asked Homeland Security to implement the policy change. Last night, there were protests outside her office calling for her ouster. Why are protesters directing outrage at Collins specifically, Ari? Yeah, so I think, well, over the immigration issue, she's drawn a lot of fire from the left over her votes to continue funding ICE.

3:58Ari Snider:And I believe ICE is now funded through the end of the Trump second term and has seen its budget grow quite significantly. So there's a lot of criticism over her for funding that agency. And this criticism isn't new, right? In January, there was a big immigration enforcement surge in Maine where we saw about 200 people arrested in less than a week, which was really just an astronomical increase from what we'd been seeing even earlier in the Trump administration. And Collins drew a lot of criticism for funding ICE through that as well. And for her response, though, I will add that she said that her role there was trying to speak with former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to sort of wind down those operations.

4:51Ari Snider:That, of course, did not placate Collins' critics, but that's what she said her role was in trying to wind those operations down. So there are a couple of things you just said that I want to pull apart. We'll go back first to this, your point about the funding for ICE. Today on Morning Edition, the other senator from Maine, Angus King, said that federal authorities have, quote, very little credibility, called for transparent investigation. But he also talked about the fact that the Republican majority Congress has already funded ICE for the remainder of the president's term. They've already been forward funded, which I've never seen before in my experience in Congress, where they are literally unaccountable.

5:31So public pressure, pressure from members of Congress like myself and others has to be maintained. And that's the public pressure on the president. But as you're saying, there's public pressure on Susan Collins here, too, during a pretty dicey fall campaign. Is this going to stay tricky for her? She's being challenged. Sure.

5:52Ari Snider:I mean, her challenges are certainly going to try to make it stay tricky. I won't get into the whole Senate race because that obviously just got thrown into chaos with Graham Plattner dropping out. But, you know, some of the Democrats who are lining up to challenge Collins are already drawing attention to this. Dr. Nirav Shah, who's a former state CDC director, held an event today specifically criticizing Collins for voting to fund ICE. Collins, you know, in a statement has said that she wants a full investigation following the Biddeford shooting. So let's talk now more about that investigation into DHS killings in Minneapolis.

6:29That investigation has been contentious. There are these questions about how this investigation will go. you've said that you don't always yet have the information you need. Do you have a sense of whether federal and state prosecutors are going to cooperate here?

6:45Ari Snider:I think it's a little too early to say exactly how that's going to play out. Maine's attorney general yesterday put out a statement, you know, in sort of the immediate aftermath of the shooting that his office was investigating. And for what it's worth, that statement said that his office was cooperating with local state and federal law enforcement. Senator Collins has also said that through her conversations with DHS that they will be investigating as well. But I think that's going to be, you know, obviously one of the major questions that we're paying attention to and many others are paying attention to as well is that interaction between state and federal investigators.

7:24Ari Snyder is a reporter with Maine Public. Ari, I know you've followed this closely. Thanks for your reporting on it.

7:31Ari Snider:Thank you so much.

7:35Coming up next, there are more than 50 ,000 American health care workers living with temporary protected status. Many of them are going to lose that protection from deportation as a result of a recent ruling by the Supreme Court. In addition to upending their lives, that decision could also exacerbate staffing shortages in the home health care industry. More on that in just a minute.

8:11So, Haitians with temporary protected status will lose their ability to work in the U.S. next week. That's after the Supreme Court allowed President Trump to end the TPS program for hundreds of thousands of people. Many of them could be deported back to Haiti, a country for which the State Department has issued a do-not-travel advisory, quote, due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care, end quote. There's a bit of irony, then, that one of the industries where Haitian Americans have found work is health care. So with the Department of Homeland Security directing employers to fire people with TPS in the next 10 days, we wanted to hear from Kevin Thomas, president of the New York State Association of Healthcare Providers.

8:58He spoke to Peter O'Dowd. Let me walk you through what is going on on the ground, because it's different for every agency depending on who they serve. So in late June, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the way they did on TPS, it created a lot of uncertainty. So right after that decision, USCIS issued some placeholder dates saying Haitians and Syrians on the I-9 for employers, it needs to end on July 10th. And then on July 10th, they pushed it for July 17th for Syrians and July 24th for Haitians. Now, think about what is really happening when these extensions don't come. For an agency with a large population of Haitian Creole-speaking clients, this becomes an enormous problem if there aren't replacement aides who speak the language, and it won't stop with Haitian workers.

10:03We fully expect other groups to be affected next. So the dates are shifting, but July 24th for Haitians, that's in 10 days. Are you already seeing the effects of that or immediate changes? For some agencies last week, for example, I was told that some of their Haitian aides, they were pulled from some of their patients. But then when the extensions went through, I guess they were allowed to work again. But again, this is just causing whiplash for a lot of agencies trying to figure out what is next. What is the backup plan to replace those workers eventually? So we already have limited home health aides.

10:50And it is difficult to just replace someone that a patient is used to for years. So you've got a situation where they're offered a replacement aid. But if the patient doesn't like them, they're just not going to use them. One of the arguments that I've heard against TPS is that it allows people from other countries to work in the United States with lower wages. So at this point, do you think organizations are going to be able to find American workers to fill these positions if, for example, they increase the pay? So here in New York, we've got a minimum wage rule for home care workers. It increased in January.

11:38So here in New York, at least, I don't see how a licensed home care agency is going to go around that minimum wage rule. So that minimum wage you're talking about in New York, it depends on where you are in the state, but it could be between$18 and$20 an hour. But Kevin, the question is, that's a lot of workers to lose. Where are you going to find new ones? Again, it's already hard to get trained home care workers and nurses. It's just going to be a struggle. From what I've heard from my members, patients are just going to lose someone that they've been used to for years on end to take care of them.

12:20As I'm sure you know, Haitians first got temporary status after a 2010 earthquake, and the State Department still tells people not to travel there because it's unsafe for political reasons. But the Trump administration has always said the program's temporary and not permanent. And so, you know, employers must have known that at some point it would end. Did they prepare for that day? For many agencies, they did not prepare for what we are seeing today, especially with this administration where when all this started which was like last summer they just cut off tps in the summer and then there were court hearings about it employers did not expect such animosity towards immigrants with this new administration and the way they've been going about doing things we've been talking about workers but what is losing those workers mean for the patients they take care of?

13:20So TPS is not just a document, right? We're talking about the aide who has bathed the same 88-year-old woman in Queens for six years and knows exactly how she likes her tea. No, we're talking about the caregiver in Nassau County who learned her patient's daughter's name before she even learned the bus route to work. We're talking about those type of workers. Like, this is what we're losing. Kevin Thomas, president of the New York State Association of Healthcare Providers, which represents agencies providing healthcare in people's homes. Kevin, thank you. Nice to talk to you. Thank you.

14:02Coming up, more than 4 ,000 people have reported cases of cyclosporiasis in the past few weeks. While the largest share of those cases are in Michigan, the gastrointestinal parasite has now been found in 31 states. What you should know after the break.

14:34By now, you have likely heard about the cyclosporiasis outbreak. if for no other reason than that it's been branded the explosive diarrhea parasite. The FDA and CDC are investigating the source, which so far is unidentified, but some restaurants have cut back on serving fresh produce as a precaution. The disease can last for weeks, causing stomach cramps and severe diarrhea. We had some questions for Dr. Kutika Kupali, an infectious disease physician in Dallas. She told Tiziana there are outbreaks of cyclospora every summer, but not usually like this. The reason this outbreak is different is that it has a large size and large geographic spread with cases reported across 31 states, and the fact that we still don't know what's causing it.

15:29Additionally, even though CDC has reported about 840 some cases, we know that the numbers are probably an underestimate as Michigan alone has reported more than 2 ,500 cases this year alone. Is there some working theory about the source for this year? The leading theory is that it's coming from contaminated fresh produce. That's usually how all major cyclospora outbreaks have occurred. However, there may be multiple clusters or causes rather than one food source, given how large it is right now. So that's one of the things that they're taking a look at to try and figure out, is there a single vegetable or brand of vegetable that may explain this outbreak?

16:13So why produce in particular? Why is that sort of the top candidate as a spreader of this cyclospora? So a lot of that's based on what we know about cyclospora. Outbreaks in the past have been linked to things like cilantro, raspberry, leafy greens, and that's because they're typically eaten raw. It's a parasite that contaminates the produce, and often through eating that particular produce, people become sick. So one of the really important things is for people to ensure that they're washing any fresh produce that they're using under running water. However, they should know that washing alone doesn't reliably remove the parasite.

16:55So if you can, you want to cook whatever it is you're eating to eliminate the risk of this. Doctor, are we at the point where you would essentially advise people not to eat produce right now that they can't cook? No, I think at this point, I would definitely not recommend people stop eating fresh fruits and vegetables because, first of all, those are essential elements to having a healthy diet, but also we don't know what product is responsible. Again, I think consumers should pay close attention to washing produce, following updates from our public health authorities, and also paying attention to any recalls if a specific product is identified.

17:32And given the size and scope of the outbreak this year, I think you sort of touched on this, but I'd like to understand, is it possible that what we are seeing is multiple unrelated outbreaks versus one that's just bigger than usual? Yeah, it is possible. And I think that's one of the things we have to keep in mind is that there are cases happening all over the country. And so at this point, as they try to investigate, one of the things they'll try to figure out is, is this one outbreak in particular, or is this multiple clusters of cyclospora happening? And to be clear, my understanding is that person-to-person spread basically is not a thing.

18:10Yeah, you're absolutely right. A direct person-to-person spread is very unlikely because unlike most gastrointestinal infections, cyclospora is not immediately infectious when it's passed in the stool. The parasite has to mature in the environment, and that usually takes one to two weeks before it can infect someone. That's why most infections are acquired from contaminated food or water and not just from an infected person. Dr. Kupali, we know the symptoms are diarrhea, they're gut-focused, how does someone know they have cyclosporiasis rather than, say, food poisoning or the flu? Yeah, that's a really great question.

18:47So you can't tell based on symptoms alone. Cyclospora, as you alluded to, typically causes GI symptoms. It causes watery diarrhea, abdominal cramping, bloating, nausea, loss of appetite. And so one of the things that makes this different is that these symptoms often last for weeks. So if someone has persistent diarrhea, especially now that we know that this outbreak is ongoing, they should contact their health provider because they can do a specific stool test to diagnose cyclospora. Dr. Krutika Kupali is an infectious disease physician in Dallas. Doctor, thanks for joining us. Thank you.

19:29Stay safe out there. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Wilder Fleming, Jill Ryan, and Jenna Griffiths. Our editors were Todd Munt, Nicaela Rodriguez, and Michael Scotto. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin, and here and now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.