A federal immigration agent shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian father on Monday morning in Biddeford, a coastal city about 15 miles south of Portland, in a killing that has ignited protests across the city and drawn condemnation from Maine officials of both parties.
Advocates say the victim was authorized to work in the United States, and one of the state’s U.S. senators says federal authorities have now confirmed the man was not the person they came to arrest.
The shooting occurred shortly after 7 a.m. near the intersection of Pool and Hill streets in downtown Biddeford. Neighbors and immigrant rights groups identified the man killed as Joan Sebastian Guerrero. The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said in a joint statement that Guerrero had authorization to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number. Authorities had not formally released his name as of Monday evening.
The Maine Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating the shooting, said its initial findings indicate that an Enforcement and Removal Operations 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.” The officer will be placed on leave, which the office described as standard protocol in police-involved shootings.
Witnesses described a violent and chaotic scene. Images from the intersection showed an unmarked white SUV with flashing police lights that appeared to have rammed the passenger side of a white sedan, which was stopped at an angle in the middle of the intersection. Bullet holes were visible in the windshield, according to the Portland Press Herald.
Lucas Scott, 18, told the Portland Press Herald that he saw agents in green vests jump out of unmarked vehicles with flashing blue lights, and that one agent drew a firearm, yelled at the driver, and then fired about four shots. Another witness, Daniel Boucher, told the newspaper that he saw the SUV trying to ram the smaller car, and that the wounded man was bleeding heavily from the head but still speaking. According to Boucher, the man said, “I tried to stop.”
A witness who spoke to the Portland Press Herald described a distressed family at the scene, including a woman who cried out, “You took her dad!” alongside a child who appeared no older than three, still in her pajamas.
The victim was not the target
Maine Senator Angus King said he was informed by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that the man killed was not the target of the arrest warrant. King’s office said the senator had spoken directly with Mullin. King also said the agents involved were not wearing body-worn cameras.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent. The FBI is investigating, and the Biddeford Police Department said its only role was to provide scene security and direct all further inquiries to federal authorities.
The killing set off protests across the city on Monday. Demonstrators gathered near the scene and marched to the Biddeford district office of Senator Susan Collins, with video showing protesters filling the building’s entryway and pounding on interior doors as they chanted.
“Our communities are hurting,” said Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, in a statement. “We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable. How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?”
A pattern under scrutiny
According to The Independent, the Biddeford shooting is at least the 11th fatal shooting involving federal immigration agents since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second administration. It came less than a week after the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three shot in his car on his way to work in Houston.
Homeland Security has repeatedly justified such shootings with claims that a target tried to run over agents, only for evidence to later emerge that contradicts or complicates the government’s initial account. Over the past year, agents have shot at least 20 people, nearly all of them in their cars.
The enforcement operation in Maine was part of a broader surge. Earlier this year, Maine was among several Democratic-led states that saw an influx of federal agents under an operation that Homeland Security named “Catch of the Day” — an apparent play on the state’s seafood industry, following the pattern of similarly themed operations in other states. ICE has accelerated arrests in recent weeks under an administration mandate to make at least 2,000 arrests per day, with the number of people held in detention surpassing 63,000 on any given day.
A White House official, defending the broader effort to The Independent earlier this month, said, “The Trump administration is fulfilling the promise that President Trump was elected on — deporting criminal illegal aliens.”
Maine officials react
Governor Janet Mills said she had been briefed on the shooting. “I know that situations like these are alarming and frightening,” she said, adding that the Maine State Police were at the scene working with the Attorney General’s Office, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, and federal officials to determine the facts.
Senator Collins, a Republican, called for “a full and impartial investigation of what happened,” saying she understood that Biddeford police had secured the site and that the FBI was investigating. Collins has faced criticism for casting a decisive vote earlier this year to provide $70 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement.
For immigrant communities across New England — including the Haitian and broader Caribbean diaspora that CTN serves — the killing in Biddeford lands as a stark and frightening reminder of the human stakes of the current enforcement climate. A man described by advocates as a neighbor, a worker, and a father was killed in the street in front of what witnesses believed to be his own family, during an operation that federal officials now say was not even aimed at him.
The investigation by the Maine Attorney General’s Office and the FBI is ongoing, and many questions remain unanswered, including the full circumstances of the confrontation and why agents were not equipped with body cameras.
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Sources: Reporting by The Independent, the Portland Press Herald, the Bangor Daily News, NBC Boston
Editorial Disclaimer: This article was originally written in English. The French and Haitian Creole versions are produced using AI translation, and errors are possible — the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio. Readers and listeners should rely on the English text where any discrepancy arises.
