Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed a 25-year-old Biddeford man did not record footage with a body camera, 18 months after the agency directed that deploying them be a “top priority.”
Maine’s congressional delegation is pressing ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for answers, after an agent shot and killed Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, a Colombia native, while his young daughter sat in the back seat of his car. Independent Sen. Angus King, Republican Sen. Susan Collins, and Democratic Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden have all pushed the agency this week for accountability and faster deployment of the cameras.
“I’m going to pull every lever I can in order to keep up the pressure,” King said in an interview. “Some of it may be public shaming, some of it may be direct engagement with [Homeland Security] Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin. It certainly could be legislation if we could get together on a bipartisan basis.”
The shooting is testing whether the delegation — and Collins in particular as its only Republican — will extract real oversight concessions from an agency and administration that have shown little appetite for changing course. Control of the Senate and Collins’ own reelection are on the ballot in November in a state both parties see as pivotal.
So far ICE’s response has been a camera rollout it says was already underway, and no commitment to changing tactics, a sign Monday’s shooting alone may not be enough to force the reforms Democrats and Republicans have failed to agree on for months.
“It’s black-letter law that officers don’t shoot into moving vehicles unless the agent or the public is in imminent danger,” King said, adding that the evidence so far doesn’t show that threshold was met in Biddeford.
The shooting follows a fatal ICE shooting in Texas last week and the January killings of two Minnesotans by federal agents.
ICE said Wednesday that every arrest team will now include a member wearing a body camera, with more than half the agency’s field offices already equipped and the rest to receive cameras within two months. The agency claimed body cameras were a priority in a directive shortly after Trump’s second inauguration a year and a half ago.
The Intercept reported that some agents in Biddeford were wearing body cameras that were not turned on. Multiple lawmakers said they were told by Homeland Security that agents were not wearing cameras.
Mullin told Pingree Wednesday that the agency would continue its “heavy push” to arrest people with final removal orders. ICE did not answer directly when asked whether body cameras are meant to provide oversight when agents shoot, injure or kill someone, framing their rollout instead around a rise in attacks on agents.
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat representing Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, called the pace of the rollout “far too slow” and said Homeland Security needs to move faster. He said he isn’t aware of any renewed bipartisan talks on immigration enforcement legislation, though he’d welcome them.
“There have been several reforms for DHS on the table over the past year, and negotiations have repeatedly fallen apart as both sides retreat to partisan corners,” Golden said. “I don’t feel optimistic that we’d be able to come to some grand agreement in an election year.”
Collins, in a letter Thursday responding to one from Gov. Janet Mills, blamed Democrats for refusing to fund ICE earlier this year, saying that left roughly $100 million for body cameras and other GOP- and White House-backed oversight proposals unresolved.
The Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee helped negotiate $20 million for expanded body-camera use in an April funding deal and voted in June for nearly $70 billion in ICE and Border Patrol funding that included $2 million for de-escalation training, additional funding for the Homeland Security inspector general’s office, and $20 million for detention-center oversight.
Collins’ office said the senator remains supportive of reforms Democrats “inexplicably” rejected, including a ban on ICE knowingly detaining or deporting U.S. citizens, barring enforcement actions at schools and hospitals, visible ID requirements for agents, advance notice to local officials before large operations, mandatory de-escalation training and stronger detention standards.
“Nevertheless, the shootings this week, both in Maine and Texas, have raised serious questions and demand immediate action,” Collins wrote. “This is why I have called for a halt in non-urgent traffic stops.”
Echoing Collins, ICE this week attributed the delay on camera deployment to government shutdowns it said Democrats caused. Pingree rejected that explanation.
“I don’t buy for one second” that cameras are backordered because of the shutdown, Pingree told the Bangor Daily News on Thursday. “A vast majority of Americans do not support the president’s cruel and chaotic immigration agenda. Republicans must work with Democrats to bring real accountability to this out-of-control agency.”
King also faulted the Republican majority for not passing broader oversight measures earlier this year, including a ban on masked officers and a requirement that agents identify themselves as federal officers rather than simply “police.” Democrats had also pushed for a judicial-warrant requirement before agents could enter private homes.
Masking and aggressive tactics by ICE agents create the conditions for the kind of violence seen in Biddeford, David Hernandez, an immigration enforcement researcher at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, said. He said legislation is one of the few tools Congress has to force change, but he doubted the administration would act on its own.
“They count on people’s short memories,” he said.