BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — On Monday, a federal immigration officer in Maine fatally shot a motorist. This marks the second instance within a week where agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have resorted to lethal force, making it the ninth such occurrence since President Donald Trump intensified immigration measures.
Advocacy groups for immigrant rights have identified the deceased individual as a 26-year-old originally from Colombia.
According to a statement on X from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE officers were conducting surveillance at a location associated with an individual who had a final deportation order. When officers attempted to intercept a vehicle leaving the said address, the vehicle allegedly tried to escape. An officer, fearing for public safety, fired his weapon, explained the department.
U.S. Senator Angus King mentioned that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin informed him about the incident. Mullin narrated that in Biddeford, a city located about 15 miles southwest of Portland, the officer opened fire after the motorist reportedly used the vehicle aggressively against the ICE agents. Unfortunately, the officers involved were not equipped with body cameras.
Questioned about these differing reports, Senator King conveyed to CNN that clarifying these discrepancies is precisely the purpose of the ongoing investigation.
“Did this young man actually try to run over an ICE agent or was he in danger of running over other people in the street?” he said. “Was there a reasonable expectation of bodily harm or deadly force to justify this shooting?”
DHS did not immediately respond to an email seeking clarity on what led up to the shooting.
King, a Maine independent, said Mullin also told him the officers were in Biddeford to serve an arrest warrant but that it was not for the person who was shot. King said Mullin told him that earlier information that the man was the target of an enforcement action was incorrect.
Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said Mullin told her the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General is investigating in cooperation with the FBI.
Messages seeking comment were left for the inspector general’s office and the Maine Department of Public Safety.
The Maine attorney general’s office, which is also investigating, said initial statements suggest the motorist was trying to flee in the direction of the agent. The office said the agent who killed him has been placed on leave.
Witness says he heard driver say, ‘I tried to stop’
Daniel Boucher said he looked out his third-floor window after hearing a “pop, pop, pop” sound and saw a small car “turned 90 degrees to the curb” with an SUV behind it. The driver was wounded and the car started moving down the street until the SUV hit it again, Boucher said.
“His face was bloody. His head was bloody,” Boucher said, getting choked up. “I clearly heard the victim say, ‘I tried to stop.’”
Boucher said he saw an ICE officer bring a medical bag to where the man was lying before an ambulance and fire truck arrived. At one point, Boucher said, the agent who shot the man walked close to him.
“I was emotional and I just let him have it, and he looked at me and said, ‘He tried to run me over,’ or something to that effect,” Boucher said. “I don’t remember his exact words.”
Video from a security camera at a nearby business, obtained by the AP, shows a white vehicle approaching an intersection at a moderate pace before making several slow circles. A law enforcement SUV blocks its path and two officers open the driver’s door and drag out a limp body.
It was not clear from the video at what points shots were fired.
The man was authorized to work in the US, advocates say
Two advocacy groups — the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! — said the man who was killed was authorized to work in the U.S.
After the shooting, his family contacted the Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, but they aren’t ready to speak publicly about the shooting, said the group’s executive director, Mufalo Chitam.
Mary Hayes, who lives close to where the shooting happened, said the man lived nearby with his wife and daughter.
“I watched a wife fall to her knees looking at her husband’s dead body on the ground,” Hayes told the AP as she held a piece of cardboard with “No ICE Stop ICE” written on it. “I watched a little girl crying with a little pink backpack on because she’s never going to see her father again.”
The Colombian Embassy said it is in contact with U.S. authorities and “working to formally confirm the individual’s identity and nationality.”
Sadie Dilboy said the man killed in the shooting regularly came to her laundromat and would bring his daughter, who he’d give quarters to buy candy from the vending machine.
“He was such a good person,” she said. “He was always cleaning up.”
Anti-ICE protesters gather near the scene
Several hundred demonstrators gathered in Biddeford on Monday night to wave anti-ICE signs and call for the agency to be abolished.
“We will always be a city of immigrants,” said Maine Speaker of the House Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat from Biddeford.
A handful of pro-ICE and pro-Trump protesters demonstrated across the street.
Some demonstrators had gathered in the city within hours of the shooting.
Amy Goodman arrived with a sign that said “Stop Killing Us” and directed it toward police working at the scene.
“Sadly, it’s something we’re seeing a whole lot more often lately, and I’m mad about it,” she said.
A recent uptick in Trump’s immigration crackdown
On July 7, an ICE officer fatally shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, of Houston, after federal agents driving unmarked vehicles pursued him while he was taking his construction crew to a job site.
The shootings come amid a Trump administration push to carry out its mass deportations agenda. During the five-day period at the end of June, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people.
The figures indicate that while the administration is no longer cracking down on individual cities, the arrests are surging. The administration’s enforcement efforts were widely condemned last winter after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.
Hundreds of Maine ICE arrests since Trump’s return
ICE had a significant presence in Maine earlier this year, which prompted several protests. Immigration officials later said in late January that they had ceased “enhanced operations” in Maine after hundreds of arrests.
A Homeland Security spokesperson said at the time that some Maine arrests were of people “convicted of horrific crimes” including aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child.
Court records show that while some had felony convictions, others had unresolved immigration proceedings or had been arrested but never convicted of a crime.
ICE arrested 546 people in Maine between the start of Trump’s second term and March 11, 2026, the most recent data available, according to ICE arrest data provided to the University of California, Berkeley Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the AP.
About 45% of arrested people had criminal backgrounds. During the equivalent 416-day period before Trump took office, roughly 69% of those arrested had criminal backgrounds, the data shows.
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