On Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers shot and killed a motorist within the coastal city of Bideford, Maine, about 15 miles from Portland. That is the second time in per week that ICE has used lethal power, and the ninth loss of life recorded since President Donald Trump started cracking down on unlawful immigration.
Immigrant rights teams recognized the deceased man as a 26-year-old Colombian nationwide. The Colombian embassy has contacted U.S. authorities to substantiate that it’s offering consular help to the household.
Conflicting accounts of what occurred
The Division of Homeland Safety mentioned in a put up to One of many officers opened fireplace fearing for public security.
Nonetheless, Sen. Angus King of Maine supplied a unique clarification after assembly with Homeland Safety Secretary Mark Wayne Mullin. He mentioned officers opened fireplace after the person allegedly tried to make use of his automotive as a weapon in opposition to Biddeford investigators, who weren’t sporting physique cameras.
Marinlin additionally corrected his earlier assertion, telling King that officers had been on the scene to execute an arrest warrant that didn’t match the one who was in the end shot. Requested about these conflicting variations, King was cautious in an interview with the US community CNN.
“Did this younger man actually attempt to run over the ICE officer or was there a threat of operating over others on the road? Was there an inexpensive expectation of bodily hurt or lethality that may justify this capturing?”
Republican Sen. Susan Collins mentioned Mullin instructed her the case was being collectively investigated by the Division of Homeland Safety’s Workplace of Inspector Normal and the FBI. The Maine legal professional common, who can also be investigating, mentioned preliminary statements point out the driving force was attempting to flee towards the already-suspended officer.
“I attempted to cease you.”
Daniel Boucher, who lives within the space, mentioned he heard a number of gunshots and noticed a small automotive flip 90 levels onto the pavement with an SUV behind it. The injured individual’s automotive continued down the road till the opposite automotive collided with it. “I might clearly hear the sufferer saying, ‘I attempted to cease,'” Boucher mentioned, his voice rising.
Boucher additionally mentioned that when he challenged the officer who fired, the officer responded that the person had tried to run him over. Safety digicam footage from a close-by constructing obtained by The Related Press exhibits a white automotive approaching the intersection at reasonable pace, circling a number of instances earlier than a police pickup truck blocks its path, and two officers pull the limp physique from the driving force’s seat. The footage doesn’t seize the precise second of the capturing.
Damaged households and shaky communities
Two immigrant advocacy teams, the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition and Presente!, confirmed that the person is allowed to work in america. His household contacted the coalition after the capturing, however they weren’t but prepared to talk publicly, mentioned Mufaro Chitam, the chief director.
Neighbor Mary Hayes mentioned the person lived close by along with his spouse and daughter. “I noticed a girl kneeling down on the sight of her husband’s physique on the bottom. I additionally noticed a woman sporting a small pink backpack crying that she would by no means see her father once more.” One other resident, Sadie Dillboy, remembered him as a daily buyer on the laundromat together with her daughter and gave him cash to pay for the sweet machine. “He was a really good man. He was all the time very neat.”
Protests and immigration crackdown intensifies in Bideford
A whole lot of demonstrators gathered in Biddeford on Monday evening, demanding an finish to ICE and confronting a small group of ICE and Trump supporters. “We are going to all the time be a metropolis of immigrants,” declared Maine Home Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat. The episode culminates in one other lethal ICE capturing in Houston on July 7, when plainclothes brokers in an unmarked automobile pursued and killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
Each incidents are a part of a large deportation marketing campaign that led to greater than 10,000 arrests in simply 5 days on the finish of June. Based on information from the College of Berkeley’s Deportation Information Venture, ICE detained 546 individuals in Maine from the beginning of Trump’s second time period by way of March 11, 2026, and solely 45% of them had legal data, in comparison with 69% throughout the identical interval earlier than Trump took workplace.
