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.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents working out of the same Maine facility as the agent who shot a man Biddeford last week do not have body-worn cameras, a Massachusetts senator said after an unannounced weekend visit.
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, conducted a spot check of the ICE facility in Scarborough as lawmakers across the state and country pressed President Donald Trump’s administration for answers after the shooting. Markey was allowed in under a statute that lets lawmakers check conditions at federal facilities without warning.
The push from the neighboring senator, who along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren pressed the ICE field office in Boston last week for answers, came as the Department of Homeland Security and state and local authorities investigate the Biddeford shooting.
The incident has intensified scrutiny over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, which have led to multiple deadly shootings in recent weeks and left two Minnesotans dead in January. Maine appears to be one of many states where a lack of body cameras and inadequate training plague an agency that says it’s long prioritized both.
“My visit … confirmed we need to abolish ICE now and end qualified immunity in order to hold ICE accountable,” Markey said in a video posted on X.
Staffers for members of Maine’s federal delegation Tuesday said they’re still waiting on more answers from the Department of Homeland Security.
Sen. Susan Collins, 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.
Several lawmakers, including Collins, have said the rollout of cameras and training has been too slow. Collins and ICE last week blamed Democrats for government shutdowns they say stalled deployment. But Democrats have pointed to ICE receiving billions of dollars in recent years and failing to deliver on promises to make body cameras and training a priority.
Several Democrats, including the presumptive U.S. Senate nominee to face Collins, Troy Jackson, have called for ICE to be abolished. That is a near impossibility given the Republican-led Congress has funded the agency through at least the remainder of the second Trump administration.
More than three-dozen senators led by independent Maine Sen. Angus King wrote to Homeland Security Sunday, calling recent fatal ICE shootings in Maine, Texas and elsewhere this year “completely unacceptable.”
“Rather than making our communities safer, these actions endanger our citizens and seriously undermine confidence in law enforcement generally,” wrote the lawmakers, who urged ICE to fulfill previous commitments on body cameras, officer identification requirements and civilian protections.
The senators noted the two most recent victims in Maine and Texas were not ICE’s initial targets. They were also shot and killed while in their cars, which runs afoul of most law enforcement training unless there is imminent danger to agents or the public, which evidence thus far has not shown in the shootings.
ICE said a few days after the Biddeford shooting 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 in January of 2025.
Biddeford Mayor Liam LaFountain said over the weekend that he remains in close contact with representatives of 25-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero’s family and representatives. He is also engaged with lawmakers, with whom he emphasized that local law enforcement must be fully involved in the investigation.
LaFountain says he has “pointedly raised” his objection “to the unacceptable lack of body-worn cameras and the need for clear information regarding the training, supervision and accountability of the federal agents involved.”