It’s Small-Town Maine’s Turn to Be the Latest with a Fatal ICE Shooting

It hasn’t even been a full week yet since agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed a father of three in Houston on his way to work, and yet we already have another young person who has lost their life to an ICE bullet, this time on the far side of the country. Even as the Department of Homeland Security has pushed to literally deport the sole witnesses of the Texas shooting before they can be called on to participate in any investigation or litigation, it now finds itself explaining yet another killing in the small town of Biddeford, Maine, south of Portland, which occurred Monday morning. The victim has not yet been fully identified, but multiple local nonprofit organizations have told the media that the person shot was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the U.S. and had been issued a Social Security number.

The full overview here is still scant, but reporting from the likes of the Portland Press Herald has already provided heart wrenching details. A woman who lives nearby, for instance, described the victim’s family as present and hysterical at the crime scene, overhearing a family member yelling at ICE agents: “You took her dad, you took her dad!” That resident, Cecelia Humiston, suggested a toddler daughter of the victim was at the scene: “They were with a little girl, she couldn’t have been older than three. She was still in her Bluey pajamas.” Another neighbor gave the following chilling quote: “I heard agony. I heard a howl that came from your soul, that your whole life had just changed and it was never going to be the same.”

Well, that certainly feels like an immediate contender for one of the saddest and most infuriating things I’ve ever read.

A report on the ground from the ICE shooting in Biddeford that should make every parent in this country lose their minds:

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— Leah Greenberg ❌👑 (@leahgreenberg.bsky.social) 1:44 PM · Jul 13, 2026

Also familiar? The immediate DHS playbook in transferring blame for the shooting squarely onto the victim. There has not yet been a direct ICE or DHS press release on the incident, but DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin was reached by Maine Sen. Angus King, who relayed that Mullin instantly fell back on parroting the exact same language that has previously been used to justify the deaths of others killed by ICE, including Renee Good and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Mexican national and Texas resident shot just last week. Mullin reportedly told King that the 26-year-old had chosen death because he “weaponized his vehicle,” which as we all know confers upon any ICE agent in the vicinity to right to kill at will.

You’ll no doubt also be comforted to know that unless some bystander footage emerges of the incident, we’ll probably be getting no video evidence whatsoever to prove how the shooting transpired. Senator King said he was told by Mullin that the ICE agents involved were not wearing body cameras, despite ICE policy specifically requiring their usage. Nor were the agents who shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, as far as we know. Mullin reportedly pleaded mea culpa, saying that the body cameras were still in the process of being distributed and hadn’t yet made it to Maine, despite their use having been the policy for years. Isn’t it weird how easy it is to distribute guns, but how hard it is to distribute cameras? But don’t worry, the 82-year-old Maine senator said he was “concerned,” hearing that, and said that Mullin had promised a “transparent” investigation. Sounds like it’s all taken care of!

“I am concerned. They should have been having body cameras two years ago when this whole thing started,” said King. “My belief is that our state and local officials should also be kept informed and engaged in the investigation. Given what’s happened around the country, we need to verify that this investigation will be thorough and transparent.”

Federal agents were involved in a fatal shooting in Biddeford this morning. Someone is dead. I don’t have details, and won’t speculate. But this is at least the 11th fatal shooting involving ICE or Border Patrol under Trump. It’s time to get ICE off our streets.

— Shenna Bellows (@shennabellows.bsky.social) 10:16 AM · Jul 13, 2026

Well, I’m sure that letting ICE investigate itself and shut out local investigators, as it repeatedly did in Minnesota and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, will be just the ticket to achieving that kind of transparency and accountability for immigration agents who can’t seem to stop killing people. Since the start of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s barbaric immigration crackdown, at least 11 people–that we know of–have been shot dead by federal immigration agents. And then there are the other cases that are briefly recorded and then disappear from the headlines, people like California’s Vicente Ventura Aguilar, a man who witnesses say was detained by ICE agents and suffered a medical emergency … and then vanished off the face of the Earth, with DHS saying they have no record of him ever being detained. Aguilar has never been seen again.

In Maine, meanwhile, protestors and activists are organizing, mobilizing and spilling out into the streets in impromptu anti-ICE protests. Earlier today, dozens of protestors entered the Biddeford offices of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, chanting “ICE out now!”, before being forcibly removed by police.

The tone of the local response is not difficult to read. As a resident named Olivia Clay, who lives just a block away from the shooting put it to local television network WGME: “I’m disgusted. This is horrible. I mean, the citizens of this country are literally being gunned down in the street for doing nothing. For the color of their skin.” Another resident, Marcia Hanes added the following: “It is horrific. ICE needs to be disbanded. People who work for ICE are untrained. And we want them out of Biddeford. Killing people in cold blood. They need to be out of Maine. They need to be out of the United States.”

A slain young man, a familiar justification, and the possibility of a three-year-old daughter still in Bluey pajamas at the scene of her father’s death. Just another day in Stephen Miller’s America.