- Witness: Agents hit the car before pulling the injured driver out.
- At least seven people have been shot and killed by ICE since January 2025.
- ICE officer opened fire ‘out of fear for public safety,’ DHS says.
BIDDEFORD: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed a driver in a coastal Maine town on Monday, less than a week after an ICE agent in Houston, Texas, shot and killed a man during a traffic stop during a deportation raid there.
Commenting on Monday’s shooting nearly 12 hours after, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said an ICE officer, “out of fear for public safety,” opened fire on the man as he tried to flee from agents who tried to stop his vehicle.
The DHS statement did not mention how the driver could have posed a threat. The meeting took place around 7 EDT (1100 GMT) in Biddeford, Maine, about 15 miles (24 km) south of the state’s largest city, Portland.
DHS, the parent agency of ICE, provided few other details, except to say that the agents involved “conducted targeted surveillance of the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal.”
According to DHS, “an illegal alien left the residence in a vehicle,” with ICE officers in pursuit. The agency did not say the person seen leaving the residence was the same person whose address was under surveillance.
DHS said the Biddeford Police Department and the FBI “responded to the scene.”
Immigration advocates said the person shot was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States and had a social security number, though they did not name him or say how they were able to identify him.
“This is devastating, infuriating and unacceptable,” the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said in a joint statement.
Escalating enforcement actions
Monday’s ICE-involved killings in Maine, and last Tuesday’s in Texas, brought to at least seven the number of people shot and killed during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to office and launched a mass deportation campaign.
Immigration collections have increased even more nationwide in recent weeks. Since early June, ICE arrests in Maine have more than quadrupled to about 70 a day in early July, according to internal ICE data shared with Reuters of a source.
For most of the day Monday, the few official details known about the latest deadly ICE shooting came from elected officials who cited second-hand information shared with them by various law enforcement agencies.
U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine, a political independent who holds a Senate caucus with Democrats, told reporters that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had informed him that the person shot and killed by ICE was a man in his 20s who had “weaponized” his vehicle at officers.
According to Mullin, King said, the slain man was the subject of an “arrest warrant based on his immigration status.” But the senator’s spokesman said Mullin later provided him with new information that the victim was not the target of a warrant.
King said investigations into the shooting should not focus on the driver’s immigration status, but on whether his actions posed a threat to ICE officers that “rises to the level that justified deadly force. That’s what this investigation is about.”
Eyewitness account
A witness, Daniel Boucher, 71, a caregiver and part-time illustrator who lives in downtown Biddeford, said Reuters he was on the second floor of his apartment when he heard what sounded like fireworks at about 7:30 a.m.
He ran to the window and saw a white SUV hit a smaller white car. After running down to street level and from a vantage point just 20 feet (6 meters) away, Boucher saw an ICE officer get out of the SUV, open a car door and pull the driver out, he recalled, adding that the man had blood on his face and head.
“I remember hearing the victim say, ‘But I tried to stop,'” Boucher said, before the injured man appeared to stop breathing.
Boucher said one of the officers at the scene seemed “very distraught, almost in shock.”
In a video clip confirmed by Reutersthe white car was seen hurtling aimlessly with two men wearing vests on foot trying to stop it, but it was unclear if the footage was taken before or after the shooting.
ONE Reuters photo of the car after it was loaded onto a flatbed trailer showed the driver’s side windshield visibly pierced by what appeared to be four bullet holes.
Protests break out
Later in the day, dozens of protesters carried signs and chanted as they marched about a quarter mile from a Biddeford park to the office of Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who is running for re-election this year.
Ten protesters entered the building’s lobby and shouted “ICE out!” and “Vote her out!” and screaming obscenities. There were no arrests or violence.
About 200 protesters marched through town Monday night carrying banners and chanting “ICE out of Maine.” The rally culminated in Mechanics Park, where members of the crowd lit candles and displayed written messages expressing support for migrants.
The shooting came six days after an ICE agent in Houston’s heavily Hispanic East End fatally shot a 52-year-old man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, during a traffic stop in what the agency said was a targeted immigration enforcement operation.
ICE said in a statement after that shooting that Salgado, a Mexican national who has lived in the United States illegally for more than three decades, rammed a police car with his van and tried to run down an officer who fired in self-defense.
The agency offered no evidence to support its account. In similar cases over the past year, initial ICE and DHS use-of-force statements have been contradicted by video footage or other evidence, sometimes in court.
