A federal immigration agent shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian father in Maine, according to state officials and witnesses who saw guns drawn and a body in the street.
The victim, identified by neighbors and immigrants’ rights groups as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, was killed shortly after 7 a.m. in Biddeford, roughly 15 miles south of Portland. He was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a Social Security number, according to advocacy groups Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine.
One woman with a “distressed” family at the scene yelled out “you took her dad!” alongside a child who “couldn’t have been older than three” and still in her Bluey pajamas, according to a witness who spoke to the Portland Press Herald.
Images from the scene showed an unmarked white SUV with flashing police lights that appeared to have rammed the passenger’s side of a white sedan, which was stopped at an angle in the middle of an intersection. Bullet holes could be seen in the windshield.
Two agents in green vests reading “POLICE” were also seen pulling a man from the driver’s side seat and lying him on the ground as they placed him in handcuffs. Other footage showed officers assisting a person lying down on the street beside the car.
Lucas Scott, 18, told the Portland Press Herald that he saw ICE agents in green vests hop out of unmarked vehicles with flashing blue lights shortly after 7 a.m.
As he turned to see what was happening as he passed through an intersection, he saw an agent draw a firearm and yell at a driver who “was trying to hit the ICE officer,” Scott told the newspaper.
The agent then fired about four shots, he said.
Another witness, Daniel Boucher, said he saw the SUV trying to ram the smaller car.
“He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher told the Press Herald. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.’”
Another video from the scene appears to show a white sedan slowly circling the intersection as agents on foot reach for the car’s doors.
Homeland Security did not publicly address the shooting until roughly 11 hours later.
ICE was “conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal” when “an illegal alien departed the residence in a vehicle,” a spokesperson told The Independent.
“ICE law enforcement attempted to conduct a vehicle stop. The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon,” the person said.
“The driver of the vehicle was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted. He passed away from his injuries,” the person added.
The state’s Attorney General’s Office said initial findings suggest an ICE officer “was conducting an enforcement operation related to a final order of removal when the subject attempted to flee in a vehicle in the direction of the officer and was fatally shot.”
That officer “will be placed on leave as is standard protocol in police involved shootings,” according to the office.
But the victim was not the target of an arrest warrant, according to Maine Senator Angus King, who spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Agents were also not wearing body-worn cameras, according to King.
“Our communities are hurting,” Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition executive director Mufalo Chitam said in a statement Monday.
“We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable,” Chitam added. “How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?”
The incident is at least the 11th fatal shooting involving federal immigration agents since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second administration and comes less than a week after the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three children who was shot in his car on his way to work in Houston.
Homeland Security has routinely justified shootings with claims that an arrest target has tried to run over agents only for evidence to emerge that contradicts the government’s statements. The administration’s initial statements in the wake of Salgado Araujo’s shooting have also come under intense scrutiny after witnesses disputed the government’s official narrative.
Agents have shot at least 20 people within the last year, and nearly all of them were in their cars.
Maine was among several Democratic-led states that saw a surge of federal agents under the Trump administration’s government-wide efforts to swiftly arrest and detain tens of thousands of immigrants.
ICE has accelerated arrests in recent weeks, fueled by the administration’s mandate to arrest at least 2,000 people daily, while the number of people in detention has exploded to more than 63,000 immigrants in jail-like facilities on any given day. Daily arrests peaked at more than 2,400 last month.
“The Trump administration is fulfilling the promise that President Trump was elected on — deporting criminal illegal aliens,” a White House official told The Independent earlier this month.
Maine Governor Janet Mills said she has been briefed on the incident.
“I know that situations like these are alarming and frightening,” she said. “The Maine State Police are at the scene supporting and working cooperatively with the Attorney General’s Office, Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner, and Federal officials to determine the facts of what occurred.”
ICE’s future and the fate of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda are central to midterm elections this fall, including in Maine, where Democrats are hoping to oust Republican Susan Collins in a bid to tip the balance of power in Congress in one of the most competitive Senate elections of 2026.
Collins, who voted for the Trump administration’s request for $70 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement earlier this year, called for “a full and impartial investigation of what happened.”
“Someone is dead. I don’t have details, and won’t speculate. But this is at least the 11th fatal shooting involving ICE or Border Patrol under Trump. It’s time to get ICE off our streets," Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows wrote on X.
Bellows was among several candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for Senate after Graham Platner ended his campaign to criticize ICE in the wake of Monday’s deadly shooting.
“Our team is monitoring this situation very closely and will provide updates as we learn more,” said former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson. “My heart is with Biddeford — and with all Mainers.”
“History teaches us what happens when governments empower armed agents to operate with sweeping authority, limited transparency and too little accountability,” said social worker Paige Loud.
Maine Beer Company co-founder Dan Kleban said he will vote to “hold ICE accountable and finally provide accountability for murdering people” if elected.
“This s*** has to stop,” he wrote.
