- Witness: The officers rammed the car before removing the injured driver.
- At least seven people shot to death by ICE since January 2025.
- An ICE officer opened fire “out of fear for public safety,” DHS says.
BIDDEFORD: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot and killed a driver in a Maine coastal town on Monday, less than a week after an ICE agent in Houston, Texas, shot and killed a man in a traffic stop during a deportation campaign there.
Commenting on Monday’s shooting, nearly 12 hours after the fact, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said an ICE officer, “fearing for public safety,” opened fire on the man as he tried to flee from agents who were trying to stop his vehicle.
The DHS statement did not mention how the driver could have posed a threat. The encounter occurred around 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) in Biddeford, Maine, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of the state’s largest city, Portland.
DHS, ICE’s parent agency, provided few other details except to say that the agents involved were “conducting targeted surveillance at the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal.”
According to DHS, “an illegal alien left the residence in a vehicle,” with ICE agents in pursuit. The agency did not say that the person seen leaving the residence was the same person whose address was under surveillance.
DHS said the Biddeford Police Department and the FBI “responded to the scene.”
Immigrant advocates said the person shot was a 26-year-old Colombian who was authorized to work in the United States and had a Social Security number, although they did not name him or say how they could identify him.
“This is devastating, outrageous and unacceptable,” said the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said in a joint statement.
Escalation of enforcement actions
Monday’s killing by ICE in Maine, and last Tuesday’s in Texas, brought to at least seven the number of people shot dead during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to power and launched a campaign of mass deportations.
Immigration raids have increased even further across the country in recent weeks. Since early June, ICE arrests in Maine have more than quadrupled to about 70 per day as of early July, according to internal ICE data shared with Reuters by a source.
For much of the day Monday, the few official details that emerged about the latest deadly ICE shooting came from elected officials who cited secondhand information shared with them by various law enforcement authorities.
U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who sits in the Senate with Democrats, told reporters that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had informed him that the person shot and killed by ICE was a man in his 20s who had “weaponized” his vehicle against agents.
According to Mullin, King said, the murdered man was the subject of an “arrest warrant based on his immigration status.” But the senator’s spokesman said Mullin later relayed new information to him that the victim was not the target of a warrant.
King said investigations into the shooting should focus not on the driver’s immigration status but on whether his actions posed a threat to ICE officers “rising to the level that justified deadly force. That’s what this investigation is about.”
eyewitness account
One witness, Daniel Boucher, 71, a carer and part-time cartoonist who lives in central Biddeford, said Reuters He was on the second floor of his apartment when he heard what sounded like firecrackers around 7:30 a.m.
He ran to the window and saw a white pickup truck hit a smaller white car. After running to street level, and from a vantage point just 20 feet (6 meters) away, Boucher saw an ICE officer get out of the van, open a car door and pull the driver out, he recalled, adding that the man had blood on his face and head.
“I remember hearing the victim say, ‘But I tried to stop,'” Boucher said, before the injured man appeared to stop breathing.
Boucher reported that one of the officers at the scene seemed “very distraught, almost in shock.”
In a video clip verified by ReutersThe white car appeared to be wandering aimlessly with two men in vests on foot trying to stop it, but it was unclear if the footage was recorded before or after the shooting.
TO Reuters A photo of the car after being loaded onto a flatbed crane showed the driver’s side of the windshield visibly riddled with what appeared to be four bullet holes.
Protests break out
Later that day, dozens of protesters carried signs and chanted as they marched about a quarter-mile from a Biddeford park to the office of Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who is running for re-election this year.
Ten protesters entered the building’s lobby shouting “ICE Out!” and “Vote for her!” and shouting obscenities. There were no arrests or violence.
About 200 protesters marched through the city Monday night carrying signs and chanting “ICE out of Maine.” The demonstration culminated in Mechanics Park, where members of the crowd lit candles and displayed written messages expressing support for the migrants.
The shooting came six days after an ICE agent in Houston’s majority-Hispanic East End shot and killed a 52-year-old man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, during a traffic stop in what the agency said was a targeted immigration enforcement operation.
ICE said in a statement after the shooting that Salgado, a Mexican citizen who has lived illegally in the United States for more than three decades, rammed a police vehicle with his SUV and attempted to run over an officer who fired in self-defense.
The agency did not offer any evidence to support its story. In similar cases over the past year, initial statements by ICE and DHS about the use of force have been contradicted by video footage or other evidence, sometimes in court.
