Protests erupt in Maine after ICE fatally shoots Colombian man

Hundreds gathered at Mechanics Park in Biddeford and in Portland after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, drawing a fast-moving response from the Maine Office of the Attorney General, state police and federal investigators. The killing, which happened on the morning of July 13, has become a test of how federal use of force against migrants is reviewed when a local community says too little is being explained.

The attorney general’s office said it opened an investigation into what it called a fatal use of deadly force involving federal law enforcement. Initial statements from the office said an Enforcement Removal Operations officer was carrying out an enforcement operation tied to a final order of removal when the subject tried to flee in a vehicle in the direction of the officer and was fatally shot. Biddeford police, Saco police and Maine State Police are assisting, and the FBI is also involved.

Federal officials have since offered a narrower account of the operation. ICE said Guerrero was fleeing during an enforcement action. The Department of Homeland Security said agents were conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of a person with a final order of removal. U.S. Sen. Angus King’s office said Guerrero was not the target of the warrant agents were executing, adding another layer of scrutiny to a case that now turns on who was being watched, who was being pursued and how the encounter unfolded.

Guerrero was identified by immigrant-rights groups and local reporting as a Colombian national authorized to work in the United States. A family friend told local television that he left behind a wife, a 3-year-old child and a sister. Those details have fed the grief in Biddeford, where vigils turned quickly into calls for body cameras, transparency and accountability from the agencies involved.

The Biddeford shooting came less than a week after ICE agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston. That made it the second ICE deadly-force incident in a week and, by the Associated Press count, at least the ninth ICE-related death since President Donald Trump began his immigration crackdown. For protesters in Maine, the pattern has sharpened a broader fear that the rules governing federal force are being tested faster than the public can see them enforced.