ICE Shoots and Kills Man in Maine Who ‘Wasn’t Their Target’

Can we go one fucking week without ICE killing someone in the streets of America?

Apparently not since early this morning, just after 7 a.m., a federal immigration agent shot and killed a 26-year-old man in Biddeford, Maine. Neighbors heard what sounded like fireworks. What they got instead was a man bleeding out on the pavement in front of their homes, less than a week after ICE did the exact same thing in Houston.

If you’ll recall, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was driving his crew to a job site in Houston, Texas, when federal agents in unmarked vehicles ran him down and shot him, claiming self-defense after he supposedly rammed their car.

This time it’s Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old father from Colombia, on his way to work when ICE agents rammed his white Kia with an SUV, boxed him in, and shot him dead in the street.

Witnesses say he was still talking after he was pulled from the car, bleeding from the head, telling agents, “I tried to stop.” He didn’t stop bleeding. He died right there on the street while, according to one neighbor, nobody went over to help him.

Government officials love a good first draft, and Monday’s was a doozy. Sen. Angus King said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the man killed was the actual named target of an arrest warrant, a guy with a final removal order who “weaponized” his vehicle by driving toward the agent.

Then, hours later, King’s office got a very different call. It turns out Guerrero wasn’t the target after all. Nobody’s explained who that actually was, or whether that person even exists. This is the same walk-back we watched happen in Houston, and it’ll probably keep happening until somebody in Washington decides that shooting the wrong guy is worth more than a press release correction.

Naturally, there’s no video. King says the agents weren’t wearing body cameras, and DHS’s excuse is that the cameras just haven’t reached Biddeford yet, as if body cameras are a rollout schedule problem and not a bare minimum for agents who are, once again, killing people.

We heard this same excuse in Houston. We’ll probably hear it again wherever ICE shows up next, right up until the day somebody in Congress actually makes it mandatory instead of aspirational.

The agent who pulled the trigger hasn’t been named. He has, we’re told, been placed on leave. Paid leave, if I had to bet, because it usually is. Must be nice to get a paid vacation after killing a person of color on his way to work.

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection couldn’t distance itself fast enough, rushing out word that this wasn’t their operation, their agent, or their problem, as if jurisdiction is the part anyone’s actually upset about.

Local residents told reporters ICE had been circling the neighborhood for weeks, chasing a crew of roofers who scattered so fast one guy jumped off the roof to get away. Agents were said to be cruising the block in tinted black Camaros like they were casing a bus stop instead of enforcing federal law. So when people say they never saw this coming, I believe they mean the shooting, as the buildup was right there in plain sight.

Then there’s Bobby Charles, Maine’s Republican nominee for governor, who showed up right on schedule to remind everyone that agents “put their lives on the line” and deserve the benefit of the doubt before we know anything.

This is the same Bobby Charles who’s spent his campaign warning voters about the “Islamification of Maine” and going after Somali American lawmakers, so forgive me if I don’t treat his character reference for the guy who shot an unarmed, legally authorized Colombian man as the neutral, facts-first take he’s dressed it up to be. A man doesn’t get to build a career fearmongering about immigrants and then pose as the voice of reason the moment one of them gets shot.

By evening, residents were still standing outside saying the thing people always say. “We live in Maine,” one woman told a reporter. “We don’t expect this to happen here.” I’ve heard this line before, usually standing outside a school after a shooting, usually from someone who assumed their town was somehow exempt. It wasn’t Minneapolis this time, and it wasn’t Houston. It was Biddeford, Maine, a town most of the country couldn’t have found on a map last week. Next time it won’t be Biddeford either. It’ll be Anytown, USA, and none of us get to know which one it will be until the coroner shows up.

(Sources)