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If further evidence was needed that ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, needs to be overhauled, or even dismantled, it came this week in a report on the incomplete background check and training of the officer who shot and killed a young father in Biddeford.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that ICE hired, armed and deployed David Brouillette without reviewing a background check that could have revealed his violent past and racist views. Because he had some experience, albeit limited and troubled, with law enforcement agencies, he was allowed to skip a training course in Georgia and did online training instead.
On July 13, he fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during a traffic stop in Biddeford. Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old father from Colombia, was not the target of that day’s ICE operation. He was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a pending asylum case, according to his family and lawyers.
The Department of Homeland Security says an investigation of the shooting is ongoing, although no information about the review has been publicly released. His family identified Brouillette as the shooter. The agency declined to confirm his identity. Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey is also undertaking an investigation of the shooting.
The new information from the Times, which includes emails and numerous interviews with Brouillette’s family, reiterates that ICE is not a legitimate police force. Police departments vet their recruits, train them and do not let them roam the streets wearing masks and hiding their identities.
As we wrote in April, ICE needs a more targeted mission. It needs more oversight and accountability, and its agents need to be better trained.
Six months later, this is even more clear. We have little hope that it will happen, but an overhaul of ICE, with an emphasis on accountability and oversight, should come now, from this Congress, before more people are killed.
Brouillette, who worked briefly as a corrections officer and security guard in Maine, was hired late last year as ICE quickly ramped up its operations as part of the Trump administration’s mass immigrant deportation agenda. A whistleblower had warned of an “unprecedented lowering of standards,” which could undermine ICE and public confidence in the agency.
To justify the huge ICE buildup, President Donald Trump said the agency was going after the “worst of the worst.” That’s not what happened.
In January, ICE launched the offensively named operation “Catch of the Day” in Maine, with a supposed list of 1,400 targets. When ICE ended its enhanced operations at the end of the month, it said it had arrested about 200 people.
Data obtained by the Deportation Data Project, shows that the agency arrested 11 people with criminal convictions in Maine. Most of the people who ICE detained in Maine were held on immigration violations, which generally are civil, not criminal, matters.
Although the enhanced operation ended, ICE activities in Maine are continuing.
In July, Brouillette, a poorly trained and loosely vetted agent with long-standing racist views, his family told the Times, was part of an ICE operation in Biddeford searching for a resident who had been ordered removed from the country. Instead, they targeted Durán Guerrero, rammed his car and fired shots into his vehicle.
According to the Times investigation, law enforcement experts agree that Brouillette, who has mental health issues, possible brain trauma and a reported history of domestic violence, should not have been hired by any law enforcement agency, including ICE.
We can secure our borders and manage immigration in an orderly way without unvetted and poorly trained masked, armed agents harassing and killing innocent people. We’ve done it before and must do it again.
Congress can — and must — end this reign of terror by forcing a pause on ICE operations while questions are answered and requirements for restraint and transparency are put in place.
