On Monday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were involved in yet another fatal shooting, this time in Biddeford, Maine.
The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said the victim was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States, according to the Portland Press Herald. “He was a member of our community, a neighbor, and a human being whose life was cut tragically short. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, loved ones, and everyone now grieving this unimaginable loss,” the two immigration organizations said in a statement.
Daniel Boucher, who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting, told the Portland Press Herald that he was getting ready for work and after hearing what sounded like fireworks, he witnessed agents remove the driver of a sedan. “He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher told the Press Herald. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.’”
A representative of the Biddeford Police Department said calls about the shooting should be directed to ICE; the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment. FBI agents were photographed at the scene of the shooting as part of an apparent federal investigation.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told the Associated Press that he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the shooting. Mullin reportedly told him that the victim “weaponized” his vehicle. Similar claims by DHS have fallen apart after video footage of shootings has come to light.
It is unclear whether video of Monday’s shooting will emerge. The ICE agents involved were not wearing body cameras, according to King.
Monday’s victim is one of more than 20 people whom federal immigration agents have shot at since last year, according to the New York Times. Most of those shootings have involved people who were inside their cars. At least nine people have now been killed during encounters with immigration agents during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Another witness to the aftermath of Monday’s shooting, who asked to be identified as Em, told the Press Herald that she heard gunshots then saw a white car whose driver appeared to have lost control of his vehicle. ICE then rammed into the car to get it to stop, she said.
Lucas Scott told the paper that he saw an ICE agent draw his weapon as he was yelling at the driver of the car. Scott then said he witnessed the driver try to hit the ICE agent with his car before the agent opened fire.
Images from the scene of the shooting show what appear to be bullet holes through the windshield of a white Kia sedan. The victim can be seen lying on the ground alongside the car.
Gov. Janet Mills said that she has been “briefed on the shooting” and that Maine State Police are on the scene. Other state politicians have been more outspoken. Democrat Ryan Fecteau, speaker of the House of Representatives, was quick to name ICE as the agency involved. Troy Jackson, who is running to replace Graham Platner as Maine’s Democratic nominee for the US Senate, called for ICE to be abolished. “For too long, ICE agents have been abducting our neighbors in brazen violation of the Constitution, and today they have tragically escalated even further,” Jackson said. “This rogue agency must be abolished.”
Last week, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who lived in Texas for three decades. As Mother Jones has reported:
Salgado’s son Ronaldo Salgado held a press conference Wednesday calling for an independent investigation into his father’s death. “I want to tell you about my dad,” he said. “He was a hardworking family man. He was also a man of routine.” Every day, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo got up before dawn and drove to work on a construction site, just as he had done for 35 years.
“At 6:45 a.m., he should have been picking up the last of his guys before heading to North Houston to finish up construction on some houses,” Ronaldo Salgado said. By 6:55, his father had been shot by ICE agents who followed him in an unmarked car.
In a statement, DHS said Salgado had attempted to evade arrest and “weaponized his vehicle,” echoing language used in the hours after an ICE agent shot and killed US citizen Renée Good in her car in Minneapolis in January.
DHS ran with the same story to justify the shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago; she survived. In both cases, video evidence greatly undermined the government’s claims. DHS’s lies following the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January further eroded the department’s credibility.
After Good’s killing, Seth Stoughton, a former Florida police officer who is now a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, made clear in a Q&A with Mother Jones that cops have been trained for decades not to place themselves in front of a potentially moving vehicle and to avoid shooting at drivers. “If you imagine a vehicle driving toward you, shooting the driver is not going to cause that vehicle to stop,” Stoughton explained. “One, you might not actually incapacitate the driver. But even if you do, you’ve just gone from having a guided missile to having an unguided missile.”
In the aftermath of the Monday morning shooting, calls to Maine’s Immigrant Defense Hotline reported ICE activity elsewhere in the area. Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, called for accountability in a statement shared with the press. “We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable,” she said. “How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?”