A 26-year-old Colombian man was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, during an immigration enforcement operation on Monday, and he was not even the person agents had come to arrest. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin initially told Sen. Angus King the opposite, then called back to correct himself, setting off a cascade of questions about how federal officers ended up killing a man who was not named on their warrant.
The shooting, which occurred at the intersection of Pool and Hill streets in the coastal city roughly 15 miles southwest of Portland, has drawn calls for investigation from both of Maine's senators and the state's governor. It has also exposed a troubling gap: the ICE agents on scene were not wearing body cameras, leaving no video record of what happened in the moments before the fatal shot.
An ICE spokesperson told Fox News Digital that agents had been conducting "targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal." When a man left the residence in a vehicle, agents attempted a stop. The vehicle, ICE said, "attempted to flee the scene," and an officer discharged his weapon "fearing for public safety." The driver was struck and died from his injuries. Emergency services were immediately contacted.
The Biddeford Police Department and FBI both responded to the scene. The DHS Office of Inspector General was notified, and the agency said it would investigate the discharge of the firearm.
But the critical detail, that the man killed was not the intended target, did not come from ICE's initial statement. It came from a correction delivered privately by Secretary Mullin to Sen. King.
King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, described the sequence in an interview with Fox News. Roughly twenty minutes before his press conference, he spoke with Mullin, who told him the man killed had been the target of the warrant and had been given an order to leave the country. Mullin used the word "weaponized" to describe the man's use of his vehicle, King said.
After King relayed that account to reporters, Mullin called back with a different story.
"When I first talked to him, he said the person was the target of the warrant. He called me back. He initiated a call to me to say he had learned subsequently that he was not the target of the warrant."
King credited Mullin for making the correction voluntarily. "He had given me incorrect information. Once he learned it was incorrect, he let me know, which I respect," King said. But the reversal raises an obvious question: if the nation's top homeland security official did not know who ICE agents had just killed, what did the agents on the ground know before they opened fire?
King told Fox News that body cameras were apparently not activated on the ICE agents, meaning "no video evidence of what occurred in this case." That absence makes the factual dispute over the shooting far harder to resolve.
ICE's version holds that the vehicle tried to flee and posed a danger to public safety. A witness named Daniel Boucher, cited by the Associated Press, offered a different picture: "His face was bloody. His head was bloody. I clearly heard the victim say, 'I tried to stop.'"
An 18-year-old eyewitness named Lucas Scott told the New York Post that the car "was put into drive and was trying to hit the ICE officer," prompting the agent to fire roughly four shots. The Post identified the man killed as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian national living with his wife and infant daughter.
Those two witness accounts point in sharply different directions. Without body camera footage, investigators will have to reconcile them the hard way. When federal agents carry out enforcement operations that may involve the use of deadly force, the absence of cameras is not a minor oversight. It is a failure of basic accountability, one that inspector general reviews of other federal agencies have flagged repeatedly.
ICE described the man only as "an illegal alien" who had departed a residence under surveillance. The Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine identified him as a 26-year-old Colombian man and issued a joint statement calling his death "devastating, enraging, and unacceptable."
"He was a member of our community, a neighbor, and a human being whose life was cut tragically short. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, loved ones, and everyone now grieving this unimaginable loss."
Those same advocacy groups, Just the News reported, said Guerrero was authorized to work in the United States and had a Social Security number. If that claim is accurate, it deepens the question of why he was at the address ICE had under surveillance and what agents believed about his identity before the confrontation turned fatal.
King said Mullin told him the man "had been given an order to leave the country." Whether that characterization applies to Guerrero or was part of the initial, incorrect briefing that conflated him with the actual warrant target remains unclear.
Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican from Maine, was direct: "The shooting in Biddeford requires a full and impartial investigation of what happened." Protesters later rallied outside Collins' office, entering through the front doors, chanting "vote her out," and hanging anti-ICE signs in windows.
King pressed Mullin for a commitment on the record. "I said, 'I'm going to say that you have committed to me that this investigation will be full, fair and transparent. Can I say that?' He said, 'Yes, absolutely,'" King recounted. He invoked Ronald Reagan's "trust but verify" line and pledged to stay on the case.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, said she had been briefed on the fatal incident "involving Federal law enforcement" and that state police were cooperating with local and federal officials. The FBI, which typically takes the lead when a federal agent uses deadly force, responded to the scene. The DHS Inspector General has also been notified.
The AP noted the Biddeford shooting marked at least the ninth death connected to the administration's immigration enforcement operations and the second deadly use of force by ICE in a single week. That pace demands rigorous scrutiny, not to undermine immigration enforcement, but to ensure it is carried out lawfully and competently. When officers with the power to use lethal force cannot even confirm the identity of the person they just killed, something has gone wrong in the chain of command.
Progressive officials seized on the shooting with predictable speed. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared, "ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE," the New York Post reported. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said, "I think everyone who let ICE and Trump deploy these men on the streets needs to be held accountable."
Those reactions tell you more about the speakers than the facts. Calls to abolish ICE are not serious policy proposals, they are slogans designed to delegitimize immigration enforcement altogether. And blaming the existence of enforcement operations for a shooting whose facts remain in dispute is the kind of reflexive politics that makes honest accountability harder, not easier.
But the left's overreach does not excuse the federal government from answering hard questions. When the nation has experienced a string of high-profile shootings raising questions about federal security protocols, the public has every right to demand that agents operating under federal authority meet the highest standards of conduct, and that their supervisors know who is being targeted before a weapon is drawn.
King framed the central question plainly: "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?" That is what the FBI investigation must answer.
The open questions are significant. Who was the actual target of the ICE warrant, and where is that person now? What was Guerrero's relationship to the address under surveillance? Why were body cameras not activated during an operation that involved surveillance and a planned vehicle stop, the kind of encounter where the risk of escalation is obvious?
King said he wants to ensure "state and local officials aren't frozen out" of the investigation. Collins wants it "full and impartial." Mullin has committed, at least verbally, to transparency. The DHS Inspector General and FBI are both involved. That is a lot of oversight machinery, but oversight only works when there is evidence to review. The lack of body camera footage is a self-inflicted wound that makes every subsequent claim harder to verify.
The aftermath has already included protests, political grandstanding, and dueling witness accounts. What it has not yet included is a clear, documented accounting of why a 26-year-old man who was not named on any warrant ended up dead at the corner of Pool and Hill streets in a quiet Maine city. The investigation into this incident will test whether federal agencies under pressure to act can also be held to account when something goes wrong.
Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat, confirmed the basic facts tersely: "This morning a shooting occurred in Biddeford. A person was killed. ICE was involved." A nearby resident told reporters she heard "really loud bangs" and saw "tons of cops" outside her window.
For the family of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a wife and an infant daughter, neighbors say, the bangs and the cops are not political talking points. They are the sound of a life ending and the machinery that followed.
Conservatives who support strong immigration enforcement should be the first to demand that it be done right. A final order of removal is a lawful instrument. Executing a warrant is legitimate government action. But shooting the wrong man, and then initially misidentifying him to a United States senator, is not the mark of a disciplined operation. It is the kind of failure that hands ammunition to those who want to dismantle enforcement entirely.
If ICE agents acted in genuine self-defense against a vehicle bearing down on them, the investigation will show it. If they did not, accountability must follow. Either way, the absence of body cameras in 2026 is indefensible. Officers who carry guns should carry cameras. Full stop.
Enforce the law. Know who you're arresting. Record what happens. That is not a progressive demand, it is a conservative one.
