ICE agent shoots driver dead in Maine six days after similar death in Texas

US immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) officers fatally shot a driver in a coastal town in Maine 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 crackdown.

Commenting on Monday’s shooting nearly 12 hours after the death, the department of homeland security (DHS) said an ICE officer, “fearing for public safety”, opened fire on the man when he attempted to flee agents trying to stop his vehicle.

The DHS statement made no mention of how the driver might have posed a threat. The encounter occurred at about 7am in Biddeford, Maine, about 24km south of the state’s largest city, Portland.

The department, which is the parent agency of ICE, gave few other details, except to say the agents involved were “conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal”.

“An illegal alien departed the residence in a vehicle” with ICE officers in pursuit, said DHS. The agency did not say the person seen leaving the residence was the same individual whose address was under surveillance.

It said the Biddeford police department and the FBI “responded to the scene”.

Immigration advocates said the person shot was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorised to work in the US and had a social security number, though they did not name him or say how they were able to identify him.

“This is devastating, enraging and unacceptable,” the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said in a joint statement.

Escalating enforcement actions

Monday’s ICE-involved killing in Maine, and the one last Tuesday in Texas, brought to at least seven the number of people shot dead during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when President Donald Trump launched a campaign of mass deportations.

Immigration roundups have increased nationwide in recent weeks. Since the beginning of June, ICE arrests in Maine have more than quadrupled to about 70 a day in early July, according to internal ICE data shared with Reuters by a source.

For most of Monday, the few official details known about the latest deadly ICE shooting came from elected officials citing second-hand information shared with them by law enforcement authorities.

Senator Angus King of Maine, a political independent who caucuses in the Senate with the Democrats, told reporters that homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin had told him the person ICE shot dead was in his 20s and had “weaponised” his vehicle against officers.

According to Mullin, King said, the man killed was the subject of an “arrest warrant based on his immigration status”. However, the senator’s spokesperson said Mullin later conveyed to him new information that the victim was not the target of a warrant.

King said inquiries 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 all about.”

Eyewitness account

One witness, Daniel Boucher, 71, a caregiver and part-time draftsman who lives in downtown Biddeford, told Reuters he was on the second floor of his apartment when he heard what sounded like firecrackers at about 7.30am.

He ran to the window and saw a white SUV ram a smaller white car. After running down to street level, and from a vantage point 6m away, Boucher saw an ICE officer emerge from the SUV, open a door of the car, and pull the driver out, he said, adding the man had blood on his face and head.

“I remember hearing the victim say, ‘But I tried to stop,’” Boucher said, before the wounded man appeared to stop breathing.

Boucher said one of the officers at the scene appeared to be “very distraught, almost in shock”.

In a video clip verified by Reuters, the white car was seen appearing to meander directionless with two men wearing vests on foot trying to stop it, but it was unclear whether the footage was recorded before or after the shooting.

A Reuters photo of the car after it was loaded onto a flatbed tow truck showed the driver’s side of the windshield visibly penetrated by what looked like four bullet holes.

Protests break out

Later in the day, scores of demonstrators carried signs and chanted as they marched from a Biddeford park to the office of Republican senator Susan Collins, who is running for reelection this year.

Protesters entered the building’s foyer chanting “ICE out” and “Vote her out” and screaming obscenities. There were no arrests or violence.

About 200 protesters marched through town on Monday night carrying banners and chanting, “ICE out of Maine”. The rally culminated at Mechanics Park, where members of the crowd lit candles and displayed written messages expressing support for migrants.

The shooting came six days after an ICE agent in Houston’s heavily Hispanic East End fatally shot 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 national living in the US illegally for more than three decades, rammed a law enforcement vehicle with his van and attempted to run down an officer who fired in self-defence.

The agency offered no evidence to support its account. In similar instances over the past year, initial ICE and DHS statements about the use of force have been contradicted by video footage or other evidence, sometimes in court.

Reuters