Politics
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Gov. Janet Mills is calling on Maine’s congressional delegation to push for reforms of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after this week’s deadly violence in Biddeford.
In her Wednesday letter to U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and U.S. Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree, the Democrat said that without fundamental reforms to the agency, it’s time to “abolish” ICE.
“Before more families are robbed of a loved one, this violence has to end. Before one more community is robbed of its peace and security, this has to end,” Mills wrote in her letter. “Before more gunshots shatter another windshield, steal another person’s life and fracture the freedom of all who seek peace, this has to end. Before the fragile American dream memorialized on hopeful parchment two and a half centuries ago is altogether abandoned, this has to end.”
Among the reforms Mills suggested are banning ICE agents from masking their faces, requiring them to identify themselves, equipping all agents with body cameras, implementing better training, holding agents accountable for wrongdoing or abusing their power, and requiring court warrants.
“ICE needs to be fundamentally reformed, and if not, then it is time to abolish it,” she wrote.
That comes on the heels of Monday morning’s shooting death of 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero.
An ICE agent shot and killed Guerrero about 7 a.m. at the intersection of Pool and Hill streets, where he encountered two or three agents with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division.
Four or five shots were fired when the Colombian allegedly tried to flee from agents, who haven’t been publicly identified but have been placed on administrative leave. The agent believed to have fired the fatal shots was hired by ICE this year, according to The Atlantic magazine. The agent has worked in federal law enforcement since 2017, including with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs police force. The Bangor Daily News hasn’t independently confirmed the agent’s identity.
In a Monday evening statement, an ICE spokesperson claimed that Guerrero was in the country illegally and had a final removal order against him. But Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who previously suggested Guerrero had “weaponized” his white Kia, told King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, that Guerrero wasn’t actually the target of the agents’ administrative warrant.
Two immigrant advocacy groups here, Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine, said in a joint statement that Guerrero, who leaves behind a wife and young daughter, had authorization to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number.
The ICE agents weren’t equipped with body cameras, for which Congress approved $20 million in funding this year, meaning there’s apparently no direct video evidence of what happened between Guerrero and them in the moments before the shooting.
“Despite promising to deport only ‘the worst of the worst,’ those who pose a threat to public safety, the current administration is targeting all immigrants with a carelessness and cruelty that ignores due process and that ignites terror in communities nationwide,” Mills wrote in her letter.
She noted that ICE is deploying poorly trained recruits across the country amid a rapid hiring surge doubling its workforce thanks to $170 billion in funding from Congress under Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
In the aftermath of Guerrero’s death, ICE has temporarily halted most traffic stops. The death of Guerrero, and that of 52-year-old construction worker Lorenzo Araujo in Texas last week, happened during a traffic stop. On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump ratcheted up pressure on ICE to reverse course on the policy shift, which Mills herself called an “inadequate” half-measure made during a renewed public backlash against ICE specifically and Trump’s immigration crackdown broadly.
Several federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are participating in the investigation, which the Colombian embassy said it will be monitoring as it stays in touch with Guerrero’s family here. On Tuesday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting murder, saying that Guerrero was “killed because he was deemed an inferior being devoid of rights.”
In a Tuesday letter to Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, Maine’s congressional delegation called for him to “prioritize” a “comprehensive, transparent, and expedited investigation” into Guerrero’s death.
This may be at least the 11th fatal shooting involving ICE agents since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. That doesn’t include deaths of those in the agency’s custody. As of July 6, at least 21 people have died in immigration detention centers in 2026, on top of 33 who died last year, according to the National Immigration Project.
Earlier this year, Maine became the latest state to see a surge in ICE agents as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Catch of the Day. That surge was cut short amid a nationwide pushback against the agency’s tactics following the fatal shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis.
Of the nearly 200 detained in Maine during the January ICE surge, only 11 had criminal convictions, undercutting the Trump administration’s claim that it was targeting the “worst of the worst.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly noted Guerrero’s age. He was 25 when he was fatally shot.