A federal immigration agent fatally shot a 26-year-old Colombian father in Biddeford, Maine, during an enforcement operation directed at someone else, prompting investigations and new scrutiny of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s use of deadly force.
Joan Sebastian Guerrero was shot shortly after 7 a.m. on Monday while leaving a residence that ICE agents had placed under surveillance. Guerrero, who lived nearby with his wife and young daughter, was reportedly driving to work when agents attempted to stop his vehicle.
The Department of Homeland Security said ICE was watching the last known address of a person with a final removal order. According to the agency, someone left the residence in a vehicle and attempted to flee after agents initiated a traffic stop.
“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” DHS said. “The driver of the vehicle was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted. He passed away from his injuries.”
Federal officials have not released evidence showing what threat Guerrero posed when the agent fired. DHS has not publicly explained how close the agent was to the vehicle, whether Guerrero was told that the people approaching him were federal officers or whether anyone else was in immediate danger.
Guerrero was not the person ICE had gone to Biddeford to arrest.
Sen. Angus King of Maine said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin initially told him that the person who was shot was the subject of an arrest warrant and removal order. Mullin later corrected that account and said the warrant was for someone else.
That reversal placed the shooting’s central facts in dispute within hours of Guerrero’s death.
King said the unresolved question was whether Guerrero had actually tried to strike an agent or whether federal officers had misinterpreted his effort to leave.
“Did this young man actually try to run over an ICE agent or was he in danger of running over other people in the street?” King said. “Was there a reasonable expectation of bodily harm or deadly force to justify this shooting?”
The Maine attorney general’s office said preliminary accounts indicated that the motorist was fleeing in the direction of an agent. The ICE officer who fired the fatal shots was placed on administrative leave while the shooting is investigated.
DHS’s Office of Inspector General is investigating in coordination with the FBI, according to Sen. Susan Collins. The Maine attorney general’s office has opened a separate investigation.
The agents involved were not wearing body cameras, King said. That absence may leave investigators dependent on witness accounts, surveillance recordings, physical evidence and statements from the officers who participated in the operation.
Security video obtained by The Associated Press shows a white vehicle moving toward an intersection at a modest speed and then making several slow circles. A federal law-enforcement SUV eventually blocks the car, and officers open the driver’s door and pull out Guerrero’s motionless body.
The footage does not show when the shots were fired or what occurred immediately before the shooting.
Witness accounts challenge parts of the government’s early explanation.
Daniel Boucher told the AP that he looked from his third-floor window after hearing several gunshots. He saw Guerrero’s wounded vehicle begin moving down the street before a federal SUV struck it.
Boucher said Guerrero’s face and head were covered in blood but that he was still able to speak.
“I clearly heard the victim say, ‘I tried to stop,’” Boucher said.
Boucher said the agent who appeared to have fired the shots later told him that Guerrero had tried to run him over. Boucher cautioned that he did not remember the agent’s exact words.
Another witness told the Bangor Daily News that agents rammed Guerrero’s sedan and surrounded it with their weapons drawn before demanding that he get out. The witness said an agent fired when Guerrero tried to drive away.
The available accounts do not yet establish whether Guerrero knowingly defied an order, panicked when confronted by armed agents or used his vehicle in a manner that created an immediate threat. Investigators have not publicly released ballistic evidence, officer statements, complete surveillance footage or recordings of communications among the agents.
Immigrant-rights organizations said Guerrero had authorization to work in the United States, a Social Security number and two jobs. DHS did not publicly clarify his immigration status following the shooting.
Work authorization does not necessarily establish a person’s complete immigration status, but it contradicts assumptions that Guerrero was the subject of the removal order that brought ICE to the neighborhood.
The Colombian Embassy said it “deeply regrets the death of a Colombian national in Biddeford, Maine” and requested information and clarification from DHS. Embassy officials said they were providing consular assistance to Guerrero’s family.
Witnesses described Guerrero as a familiar presence in the neighborhood. Sadie Dilboy, who owns a laundromat Guerrero visited with his daughter, told the AP that he was kind and regularly cleaned up while doing laundry.
“He was such a good person,” Dilboy said. “He was always cleaning up.”
Mary Hayes, who lives near the shooting scene, said she saw Guerrero’s wife collapse beside his body and his daughter crying nearby.
“I watched a wife fall to her knees looking at her husband’s dead body on the ground,” Hayes told the AP. “I watched a little girl crying with a little pink backpack on because she’s never going to see her father again.”
Several hundred people gathered in Biddeford after the shooting to demand answers and protest ICE’s presence in the city. Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, who represents Biddeford, told the crowd that the city would remain a community shaped by immigration.
The shooting was the second fatal use of force involving ICE in less than a week.
On July 7, an ICE officer fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction worker, in Houston. Federal agents were reportedly pursuing other people when they encountered Salgado Araujo, who was driving members of his construction crew to a work site.
Authorities also said Salgado Araujo attempted to use his vehicle against agents. His death and Guerrero’s killing have renewed questions about the tactics ICE uses when stopping motorists, particularly when agents are traveling in unmarked vehicles or approaching people who are not the intended subjects of enforcement actions.
ICE’s operations have expanded as the Trump administration pursues mass deportations and substantially increases arrests. The agency detained more than 10,000 people during a five-day period at the end of June, according to federal figures reported by the AP.
ICE arrested 546 people in Maine between the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term and March 11, 2026, according to agency data analyzed by the AP and the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. About 45 percent of those arrested had criminal backgrounds, compared with approximately 69 percent during the equivalent period before Trump returned to office.
The distinction matters because administration officials have frequently described immigration enforcement as focused on dangerous criminals, while arrest data shows that a growing share of those taken into custody have no criminal record.
Guerrero’s death also raises a narrower question about the use of firearms against moving vehicles. Law-enforcement policies commonly limit such shootings because bullets rarely stop a vehicle immediately and may leave an injured or dead driver unable to control it. The legal justification generally depends on whether an officer reasonably perceived an imminent threat of death or serious injury.
That determination cannot be made solely from DHS’s claim that Guerrero attempted to flee. It will depend on where the officer was standing, how the vehicle was moving, whether the agent had a safe avenue of escape and whether Guerrero’s actions created an immediate deadly threat.
Until investigators release evidence, the federal government’s account remains only one version of a shooting that killed a man who was not the subject of its operation.
Guerrero’s final known words, as recalled by the witness standing above the street, were: “I tried to stop.”
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