Hundreds Stand Up and Protest in Maine After ICE Fatally Shoots Colombian Man

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside an ICE detention facility in Scarborough, Maine, on Tuesday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers fatally shot 26-year-old Colombian national Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during an enforcement operation the day before.

VIA the New York Times

The demonstration comes as the Trump administration has quietly suspended most ICE vehicle stops following two fatal shootings involving ICE officers in just over a week.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, officers were conducting surveillance of a residence associated with an individual with a final order of removal when they attempted to stop a vehicle leaving the property. ICE claims Durán Guerrero tried to flee, prompting an officer to open fire out of concern for public safety. Clear video footage that has been shared widely on social media proves their statements to be a lie, as they visibly shot him while he was sitting in his car and then dragged his body onto the ground to handcuff his lifeless body.

However, the circumstances surrounding the shooting remain disputed by the government, as accounts provided to lawmakers suggested the officer fired after Durán Guerrero allegedly attempted to use his vehicle as a weapon. This is a claim they made with Renee Good as well, the woman they shot and killed in Minneapolis, whose video footage proved to show that claim to be false, as she was actively driving away when ICE fatally shot Good.

Advocacy groups say Durán Guerrero was authorized to work in the United States and had a Social Security number. He leaves behind a wife and young daughter.

Duran Guerrero with his daughter

The FBI, along with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, is investigating the shooting, and Maine’s congressional delegation has called for a comprehensive, transparent, and expedited investigation.

ICE has become an agency with extraordinary power and far too little accountability, and as its authority has expanded, so too have reports of aggressive enforcement tactics, warrantless operations, family separations, and now repeated fatal shootings. The Trump administration’s decision to suspend most vehicle stops isn’t a sign that the agency is policing itself; it’s an acknowledgment that its tactics have become impossible to ignore.

When an agency can stop, detain, and kill with limited transparency and little public oversight, it ceases to function as a force accountable to the communities it polices. Every escalation in ICE’s power has been accompanied by fewer safeguards for the people caught in its path.

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero should still be alive, and his death is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a broader pattern of an immigration enforcement system that has grown increasingly emboldened, increasingly militarized, and increasingly willing to use deadly force. Accountability cannot end with investigations; it requires confronting the unchecked power that made these deaths possible in the first place.