Despite repeated attempts, David Brouillette never landed a job at the Hallowell Police Department.
In an application, he boasted of his experience as a Veterans Affairs police officer. He said in an email to the city in 2024 that he had interviewed there years earlier, under a previous chief, and that he believed the Maine Criminal Justice Academy could “laterally certify” his federal certification in place of state training.
Records show he never finished the Maine training program required by most state and local police agencies.
There were “too many red flags” with Brouillette’s background to hire him that year, according to a Hallowell official who worked there at the time and who only agreed to speak to the Portland Press Herald on the condition of anonymity.
A year and a half later, reports that Brouillette, 37, shot and killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero — a Colombian man with a young daughter, work authorization and no known criminal history — while working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have pushed concerns about his past into a national spotlight.
Since the July 13 shooting in Biddeford, two of Brouillette’s ex-wives have described a history of domestic abuse by him. A former Army service member told the Press Herald that Brouillette frequently made racist remarks when they were stationed together in Kansas. An estranged relative told The Associated Press that Brouillette had mental health diagnoses that should have disqualified him from ICE. And in a civil case, Brouillette said that a head injury he suffered during firefighter training left him “significantly impaired” in the years after the accident.
“The information that’s come out about him since the shooting would make me very suspect that he could pass a thorough vet,” Deborah Fleischaker, who was acting chief of staff at ICE under President Joe Biden, said in an interview. “The risks that he posed as somebody who allegedly has mental health problems, violence problems, those are major red flags and they should give a law enforcement agency pause before granting him authority.”
The Department of Homeland Security has refused to identify the agent who shot Guerrero or confirm Brouillette’s employment with ICE, but on Sunday, the Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, told CNN that he didn’t believe the officer involved “should ever have cleared vetting” if abuse allegations against him were true.
“That’s part of the ongoing investigation: did the vetting process fail? Was that information not available? Did they not know,” Homan told CNN, later calling the case a “rare instance” among ICE’s roughly 30,000 employees.
A DHS spokesperson said in an email Monday: “The ICE Office of Professional Responsibility diligently applies the proper personnel vetting regulations, including guidelines for national security, and evaluates all available information for every applicant based on these factors.”
One of Brouillette’s ex-wives said he called her and admitted to the shooting in Biddeford. Brouillette has not returned multiple requests for comment and a cellphone number for him has been out of service since July 16. Recent court records suggested that he has entered protective government custody.
An attorney representing Guerrero’s family, including his partner and their young daughter, said Guerrero had work authorization and had been complying with federal processes for immigration.
“He has no history of violence, or, overreacting to situations — compared to the person who shot him, whose entire history suggests that,” attorney Ben Gideon said.
It’s unclear when Brouillette started working for ICE, but some reports have indicated he was hired this year. Records obtained by the Press Herald from attorneys in other immigration cases dating back as far as April shed light on some of Brouillette’s enforcement work in the months leading up to the shooting.
That includes one incident that appears to have started much the same way: Brouillette and other ICE agents surveilled a house in Androscoggin County that belonged to someone they had identified as a target. They followed a car that was registered to the target as it left the house and pulled it over, according to a record of the incident.
But it was a different immigrant driving the car.
Like Guerrero, the person had work authorization and no known criminal history. The man was detained and later released.
Law enforcement aspirations
By many accounts, Brouillette had long dreamed of a career in law enforcement. Under his senior yearbook portrait for Gardiner Area High School in 2007, he wrote about plans to attend college, work for the sheriff’s office and start a family.
His first wife, Ashley Brouillette, grew up with him in Gardiner. They both participated in JROTC and educational programming for students interested in law enforcement careers. Brouillette’s older brother had served in Iraq and currently holds a high-level position in the Maine Department of Corrections, Brouillette’s ex-wife confirmed. Neither the brother nor a spokesperson for MDOC responded to repeated requests for comment.
“David looked up to his older brother, and actually, his older brother is what made him want to join the military to begin with,” Ashley Brouillette said.
His childhood was also marked by fights with other family members and students, according to Scott Collins, who said he was Brouillette’s friend in school. Collins said that at one point during their senior year, Brouillette lived with him and his grandparents after Brouillette was kicked out.
“I think he always had a pattern of being defiant or just always thinking he was right and arguing that fact,” Collins said. “You couldn’t tell him he was wrong. I stopped trying.”
After high school, while Brouillette was in the Maine National Guard, he had a daughter with Ashley. The couple divorced in 2009, following a two-year marriage that Ashley Brouillette said was abusive. She recalled Brouillette throwing boiling water at her while she was holding their young daughter.
Brouillette was sent in 2010 to Fort Riley, Kansas, after joining the U.S. Army, which also entailed a year-long deployment in Afghanistan. A former service member who said he was with Brouillette in the same company in Kansas and spoke to the Press Herald on the condition of anonymity out of privacy concerns, said he was surprised to learn that he was familiar with the ICE agent involved in the Biddeford shooting, “but not surprised that it was David.”
“He was not liked,” he said. “It was pretty known that he was a racist individual.”
The former service member remembered being upset when Brouillette turned to him, made a racist joke, and said “you know how they are.”
Brouillette’s former platoon sergeant, and a supervisor from when Brouillette was sent to Honolulu from 2014-15, did not respond to calls and emails.
After the army
Within years of Brouillette’s return to Maine in late 2015, public records show he was twice-divorced and struggled to make child support payments.
Records obtained by the Press Herald show that Brouillette worked several jobs in corrections, private security and public safety — most lasting less than a year. A resume he sent around boasted of having “thick skin” as a skill, in addition to investigative techniques and being able to manage his stress and fatigue.
According to Brouillette’s state personnel file, he often said he was resigning from jobs for “career advancement.” He told Hallowell he left the corrections department for “self-preservation.” The longest job he appears to have held was with the VA at the Togus Police Department from 2017-19.
From 2019-20, Brouillette was a child support enforcement officer for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, based in Rockland. The job entailed establishing paternity and child support criteria in court, interviewing parents, making arrests and gathering evidence for child support cases, Brouillette wrote in a resume.
In his letter of resignation in July 2020, Brouillette said that he was leaving for his “personal growth as a person and a professional.” A spokesperson for DHHS did not respond to a request to discuss Brouillette’s employment.
The state position overlapped with Brouillette’s divorce and child support battle with his second ex-wife, Lucinda, in 2019. Lucinda Brouillette has said in court filings that David Brouillette used his work experience against her.
One time in 2024, Lucinda Brouillette said that her ex-husband reported her to DHHS shortly after a judge dissolved a temporary protection order that took away her daughter.
“As soon as I was granted to get my child back, Dave made a false DHHS claim that day — now entangling me and our family once again in a mess,” Lucinda Brouillette wrote.
Local public safety career
In 2021, during training for the Maine Fire Science Institute in 2021 at Southern Maine Community College, Brouillette was hit by a steel beam, according to a lawsuit he filed against the school in 2023. Brouillette said in the lawsuit that he suffered post-concussive injuries, including impaired memory, cognitive deficits, headaches, vertigo and light sensitivities.
He said his daily activities were “significantly impaired” two years after the incident and that he was still struggling with medical bills. There were no medical records in the public file for his lawsuit.
The case settled outside of court. A public records request to the Maine Community College System for the settlement amount and agreement is pending.
Even after that injury, Brouillette worked twice for the volunteer fire department in Manchester, in 2024 and 2025.
During his first stint, Brouillette got into a shouting match with the former chief, according to Dan McLeod, another firefighter who was present. Brouillette returned a month later, after the chief’s resignation, and resigned in August of 2025 due to medical reasons, according to an attorney representing the town.
While volunteering in Manchester in 2024, records show, Brouillette was also pursuing a job at the Hallowell Police Department and said he was managing security for Granite Hill Church in Hallowell, where he also worshiped. The pastor there declined to speak to a reporter.
Brouillette didn’t get the job in 2024, but he reached out again about a year later, offering to help out part time.
In November 2025, after Brouillette asked whether Hallowell could send an officer to watch over his church’s parking lot, where he said unknown drivers were “doing burnouts and drifting,” the chief at the time told Brouillette about the department’s staffing challenges.
“I’ve talked with you about it before,” Brouillette wrote in an email on Nov. 14, 2025, “but if you need a part-time officer to come on board to help alleviate, I’d love to talk with you about that.”
Hallowell’s town manager and the current police chief both said there’s no record of the city ever having employed Brouillette.
Court records from Brouillette’s post-divorce proceedings with Lucinda Brouillette, indicate he was unemployed for a period of time in 2025. Brouillette had told the court that in June of that year he had “embarked on a new career as a real estate agent,” which he also mentioned in emails to Hallowell police.
The judge said Brouillette was receiving roughly $4,400 per month in disability payments from the VA and that he was “voluntarily underemployed.”
By December 2025, about a month after the court order, public records from the Maine Real Estate Commission show he asked to deactivate his license.
By the end of that year, according to Brouillette’s first ex-wife Ashley, he had called her saying he planned to join ICE.
Both the state and federal governments are investigating Guerrero’s shooting. Officials from the Office of the Maine Attorney General and DHS have declined to comment about their progress.
Gideon, the attorney for the Guerrero family, said last week that he believes the state is conducting a criminal investigation. Guerrero’s partner and his sister both spoke with a Maine detective, he said. The Boston Globe reported over the weekend that the attorney general’s office signed a crime victim certification for the man’s daughter, recognizing that her father died as a result of a homicide.
Homan, the border czar, said the government’s investigation is taking stock of ICE’s hiring and vetting practices. In an interview with CNN, Homan said that if the domestic violence allegations against the agent involved in the shooting are factual, “it should have been brought to the attention of those who make” hiring decisions.
Portland Press Herald Staff Writers Megan Gray, Chloe Liversidge and Teddy Almond contributed to this story.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Emily Allen can be reached at eallen@pressherald.com. Morgan Womack can be reached at mwomack@pressherald.com. Rachel Estabrook can be reached at restabrook@metln.org.