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Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered its officers on Tuesday to halt most vehicle stops across the country after they shot two people over the past week.

Madeleine Ngo covers immigration policy. Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent.

President Trump on Wednesday demanded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers continue to stop vehicles as they seek to detain people in the country without legal status, despite two fatal shootings that led to a temporary halt to the practice just a day before.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately say whether they were resuming the traffic stops, which they had largely halted after ICE agents shot and killed one person in Houston and another in Biddeford, Maine , in the span of one week.

The rapidly shifting policy is part of what has been a recurring pattern as the Trump administration has sought to achieve the president’s goal of mass deportations. As the government’s aggressive tactics have drawn intense public backlash, homeland security officials have scaled back the most visible aspects of their crackdown — only to feel the pressure to ratchet up arrests again.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Trump defended the traffic stops and urged ICE to “go back and do your very important job.”