Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was not who ICE came for. Neither was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Both men are dead anyway, shot by federal immigration officers who pulled over the wrong car, six days and 2,000 miles apart.
Now the tactic that killed them has been halted.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were ordered this week to stop conducting most vehicle stops, effective immediately, a retreat from a method that had become a signature of the administration’s enforcement campaign.
The order originated with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a law enforcement source told ABC News, and was sent to deportation officers by email. They were told to prioritize any method but this one, according to ABC News.
The man at the laundromat
Durán Guerrero, 26, a Colombian national, died Monday morning at the corner of Pool and Hill streets, roughly 150 feet from the apartment where he lived with his wife and their three-year-old daughter.
The people who knew him were not policymakers or advocates. They ran the laundromat down the block.
“Everyone knows him,” Sadie Dilboy, who owns the shop with Cory Poulin, told the Associated Press. She remembered the little girl and the quarters he handed her for the candy machine.
His father, Omar Duran, learned of his son’s death from Colombia. He told Noticias Caracol, a CBS News partner, that his son had “left the country to build a future for his family.”
“I only ask God,” the father said, “that this be resolved in the best way, and that there be justice.”
In Houston, six days earlier, Salgado Araujo was driving to work when officers stopped a white van they believed carried someone else. He had lived in the United States for more than thirty years. His family says he had no criminal record and was close to receiving a work permit. He was 52. He had three children.
A story that keeps changing
What happened in the seconds before Durán Guerrero died depends on which official you ask — and no camera was running to settle it.
Senator Angus King said Mullin told him the officer fired after the man used his car as a weapon. Hours later, the Department of Homeland Security posted a different version: the car “attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.” Maine’s Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating, split the difference — the driver fled “in the direction of the officer.”
Fleeing and attacking are not the same act. The distinction is the entire case.
Security footage obtained by the AP from a nearby business shows a white car easing toward the intersection, circling, then an unmarked SUV cutting it off. Two officers wrench open the driver’s door and pull out a body gone limp. The camera never catches the shots.
Daniel Boucher heard them from his home — “pop, pop, pop” — and ran toward the noise. He found a man bleeding from the head and still conscious.
“I clearly heard the victim say, ‘I tried to stop,'” Boucher said.
Later, Boucher recalled, the officer who fired approached him and offered his own account, unprompted: the man had tried to run him over.
The officers wore no body cameras. King confirmed it. That absence now sits at the center of an investigation involving the DHS Office of Inspector General, the FBI, and the state — an arrangement King says the public will not accept.
“Unfortunately, the feds don’t have the credibility today,” he told CBS News. “The people of Maine are not going to accept an investigation that’s run by ICE or at the FBI.”
Officials also disagree about the man himself. Two advocacy groups, the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine, say Durán Guerrero was authorized to work. DHS says he was here illegally under an order to leave.
What the pause actually does
The suspension is narrower than the headline suggests, and CTN readers should understand its limits.
It binds Enforcement and Removal Operations — the division that arrests and deports people on civil immigration grounds. Homeland Security Investigations, which pursues criminal cases, is untouched. Officers may still stop vehicles alongside partner agencies serving judicial warrants on criminal suspects, and exceptions survive for those deemed most dangerous.
And it expires. Sources described the pause as temporary, in place only until officers complete additional training on how to conduct the stops.
DHS declined to confirm any of it. “We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets,” the agency said. “We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics.”
The premise on trial
For Maine’s senators — one independent, one Republican — the shooting has forced a public reckoning with the campaign’s stated purpose.
Susan Collins says she called Mullin the night of the shooting and pressed him to stop the stops. “While the investigation of the Biddeford shooting is not yet complete, it raises sufficient critical questions,” she said.
King went after the justification itself and brought arithmetic.
“The whole premise of this has been ‘the worst of the worst,'” he said. “Well, in Maine last winter, they arrested over 200 people. Nineteen of them had criminal records. That means 90% of the people arrested had no criminal records.”
Hundreds gathered Tuesday outside the ICE detention center in Scarborough. Signs read “Stop the murder” and “End this terror.” Flowers piled up at the intersection where Durán Guerrero bled out. Maine’s congressional delegation demanded an investigation that is “comprehensive, transparent, and expedited.” From Bogotá, outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the officers of treating a Colombian citizen as “an inferior being without rights” and asked President Trump to explain.
What this means for our communities
Two counts circulate for how many people federal immigration agents have killed since this crackdown began: the AP puts Durán Guerrero’s death at least ninth, while The Independent counts at least eleven fatal shootings. The tally nobody contests is this one — agents have shot at least 20 people in the past year, and nearly every one of them was sitting in a car.
That is the arithmetic behind this week’s order.
For Haitian and Caribbean families across New England, the lesson of Biddeford is not abstract. Durán Guerrero did nothing that any of us do not do every morning. He got in his car. Officers were watching a neighbor’s address. He was the wrong man, and the difference between him and the man they wanted was resolved by gunfire, and no camera recorded it.
Sources: CBS News (Nicole Sganga, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Mark Osborne); ABC News; the Associated Press; Reuters, via CNBC;
Editorial Disclaimer: This article was originally written in English. Other language 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.
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