NPR News: 07-16-2026 3PM EDT

Lakshmi Singh· Host0:01

Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The White House says US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are still conducting vehicle stops. Here's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Karoline Leavitt· Soundbite0:13

The President and the Secretary of Homeland Security are on the same page that vehicle stops are a necessary tool that ICE agents need in order to continuing, uh, continue their deportation campaign of the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals from our country.

Lakshmi Singh· Host0:26

Leavitt says DHS has issued verbal guidance to field offices nationwide. This week, the department said it would pause non-urgent vehicle stops following two deadly shootings in less than a week in Maine and in Texas. In both cases, the ICE officers were not wearing body cameras. Today, Leavitt said more than half of all ICE field offices now have body cams, and the remainder are expected to have them within 60 days. She says the rollout has been slower than the administration's hoped. She attributed that to the previous weeks-long DHS shutdown, which she blamed on the Democrats. A key Republican senator says he will not vote to advance Todd Blanche's nomination to serve as attorney general until Blanche meets with victims of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. North Carolina's Thom Tillis made the statement during the second day of hearings on Blanche's nomination. Here's NPR's Ryan Lucas.

Ryan Lucas1:20

Epstein survivors say they have been trying to meet with Blanche for months, but to no avail. Now, Senator Thom Tillis, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will vote on Blanche's