Hundreds of people protested in Maine on Tuesday over the killing of a Colombian man by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, after federal officials appeared to change their narrative about the deadly encounter.
The US Department of Homeland Security said an ICE officer, “fearing for the safety of the public,” shot and killed a man Monday in Biddeford while officers were patrolling the home of a person they believed was in the US illegally and had issued a final removal order.
The Department says in a document written on X that when ICE tried to stop a car driven by a person who was leaving home, the car tried to run away and the officer fired his weapon.
That was a change from the way Maine Sen. Angus King described the incident hours ago, when he said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him an officer opened fire after the man tried to use his car as a weapon. King said Mullin told him the police were trying to get an arrest warrant, but not the man who was shot.
The driver was Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian, the Colombian Embassy told The Associated Press in a statement.
In a scathing message to X, outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting a targeted killing “at the hands of the US government.”
Petro, who has openly clashed with US President Donald Trump, called on Trump to provide an explanation and accused ICE officials of treating Durán Guerrero as “a lowly person with no rights.”
The shooting sparked outrage in Biddeford and the wider area. Protesters gathered Tuesday outside the ICE facility in Scarborough, which is up the coast from Biddeford.
“These people are killers and they need to leave our state now,” organizer Todd Chretien told the crowd, which included some holding signs reading “Stop the killing” and “End this violence.”
Questions surround the shooting
The shooting of Durán Guerrero marked the second time in a week that ICE has used lethal force and at least nine deaths since Trump began cracking down on immigration.
The officers involved in the shooting in Biddeford, which is southwest of Portland, did not have body cameras, leaving many questions about what happened. Among them are how close the officer was to the car when they fired, whether officers told Duran Guerrero to stop, and how ICE believes he posed a danger to the public.
“We are constantly evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals on our streets. We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement strategies,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement.
Another Maine senator, Republican Susan Collins, said Mullin told her the DHS Office of Inspector General was investigating in cooperation with the FBI.
Photos showed bullet holes in the car’s windshield.
The Maine attorney general’s office, which said it is working with federal agencies to investigate, said initial reports indicated the driver was trying to flee toward the officer, whose name has not been released and has been withheld.
The video shows the effect of the capture
Video from a nearby business’s security camera obtained by The Associated Press shows a white car slowly approaching the intersection before making several circles. A police SUV blocked the way and two police officers opened the driver’s door and dragged the limping body.
It is not clear from the video when the images were shot.
Daniel Boucher, who lives nearby, said he heard “pop, pop, pop” and ran to the intersection.
“His face was covered in blood. His head was covered in blood,” Boucher said. “I heard the victim say, ‘I tried to quit.’
At one point, Boucher said, the officer who shot Durán Guerrero walked up to him.
“He looked at me and said, ‘He tried to run me over,’ or something like that,” Boucher said. “I don’t remember his words very well.”
Two advocacy groups – the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! – said Durán Guerrero is authorized to work in the US
Durán Guerrero is survived by his wife and young daughter. Neighbors said that he was a friendly and familiar person, although they did not usually talk to each other because he did not seem to speak English.
Sadie Dilboy and Cory Poulin, who own a laundromat near the road where the car stopped, said they saw Durán Guerrero all the time.
“Everybody knows him,” said Dilboy who remembered that he used to come to their store with his daughter and give her a place to buy candy.
An ICE agent shot and killed a man in Biddeford, Maine, sparking protests across the state. The US Department of Homeland Security says the man was using his car as a weapon. It is the second time in a week that an immigration officer has killed someone in the United States.
Claudia Morton, who lives near Durán Guerrero and his family and often waves to him, was devastated by the shooting. “The whole world should mourn,” he said on Tuesday.
Last week in Houston, a police officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, after authorities chased him in unknown vehicles as he drove to a construction site.
The two shootings come in the midst of Trump’s campaign to push through the mass deportation program. In five days at the end of June, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people.
These statistics indicate that although the authorities are no longer attacking towns and cities, there are people being arrested. The administration’s enforcement efforts were widely criticized last winter after the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.
