Questions Grow After Fatal ICE Shooting

Police tape cordons off a street with blurred officers and vehicles in the background

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian father in Biddeford, Maine — a man who was legally allowed to work in the United States and was not even the person ICE was looking for.

Story Snapshot

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26, was shot and killed by an ICE agent on July 13, 2026, in Biddeford, Maine, during an immigration enforcement operation targeting someone else.
ICE says Guerrero tried to flee and drove his car toward an officer; the Maine Attorney General’s office confirmed agents reported he drove “in the direction of the officer.”
Guerrero had legal work authorization, lived nearby with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, and neighbors described him as a hardworking family man.
His death was the second ICE shooting fatality in one week, prompting ICE to issue a nationwide order pausing most traffic stops pending new training.

Wrong Man, Deadly Outcome

ICE agents were watching a home in Biddeford on the morning of July 13, 2026, looking for a specific person. Guerrero was not that person. When agents tried to stop him, ICE says he attempted to flee and drove his car toward an officer. The Maine Attorney General’s office confirmed that early statements describe Guerrero driving “in the direction of the officer” as he tried to get away. An agent then fired, striking Guerrero. He died at the scene.

Security camera audio from a nearby home captured five gunshots at 7:17 a.m. Witness Daniel Boucher, who lives in an apartment building on the corner, told the Associated Press he saw agents pull Guerrero from the car after the shooting. Guerrero was a married father of a 3-year-old daughter. Friends, coworkers, and neighbors described him as someone working hard to build a stable life. He held legal work authorization in the United States.

A Pattern That Forced a Policy Change

Guerrero’s death was not an isolated event. Just days earlier, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo died in Houston after ICE agents shot him during a vehicle stop. The Department of Homeland Security said Salgado Araujo rammed their vehicles with his van before an agent fired. These two deaths in less than one week pushed ICE to act. The agency issued a nationwide directive telling agents to stop initiating most traffic stops while new training is developed.

Researchers tracking gun violence found at least 28 incidents in which immigration agents shot at people since Trump’s enforcement operations began in his second term. The Maine and Houston cases were two of four fatal vehicle-related shootings in that period. ICE acknowledged that stopping vehicles for immigration arrests had become “increasingly common” under the current enforcement push — a push driven by a mandate to arrest and detain as many people as possible.

Questions Without Answers — and a Political Firestorm

Senator Susan Collins noted that the ICE agent who shot Guerrero was not wearing a body camera, leaving no official video of the shooting itself. Security footage from nearby homes shows agents surrounding Guerrero’s vehicle in the moments before shots were fired, but does not show the full sequence of events. The Maine Attorney General’s office has opened a review. No independent video has been released that fully confirms or contradicts the official account.

🚨 David Brouillette—the ICE agent who killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero—has now been exposed by his ex-wife and relatives as a man with a long history of violence, threats, abuse, and severe instability.

His ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, says he called her after the killing,… pic.twitter.com/1PoSHvydao

— 🍊 (@john7whyte) July 17, 2026

Hundreds of people gathered for a vigil in Biddeford the night of the shooting. Protests also broke out in Portland and at an ICE facility in Scarborough. Democratic lawmakers called for ICE to halt all operations. Meanwhile, President Trump said ICE would not permanently stop traffic stops despite the earlier internal order. The case has become a flashpoint in the larger debate over how far federal enforcement should go — and what safeguards should exist when agents use deadly force against someone who turned out to be the wrong person.