ICE Murders
Acting as Judge, Jury, and Executioners
This week, protesters gathered outside the office of Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, after an ICE agent shot and killed a twenty-six-year-old Colombian man. The circumstances surrounding the shooting remain deeply contested because federal officials themselves cannot seem to agree on what happened.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed officers had been conducting surveillance at the home of someone believed to be in the country illegally and subject to a final removal order. According to DHS, when officers attempted to stop a vehicle leaving the property, the driver tried to flee and an ICE agent, “fearing for public safety,” opened fire.
Senator Angus King, however, said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gave him a different explanation entirely. According to King, Mullin claimed the driver attempted to use his vehicle as a weapon against ICE officers. King also revealed something equally disturbing: the arrest warrant officers were attempting to serve was not even for the man they ultimately killed.
According to the Associated Press, the officers involved were not wearing body cameras, leaving enormous questions unanswered and perhaps forever unanswerable. It remains unclear how close the agents actually were to the vehicle, whether they ordered the driver to stop, or why ICE believed he posed a threat to the public.
The driver has been identified as Johan Sebastian Guerrero.
Local residents gathered to mourn him.
This is what protesters in Biddeford, Maine, had to say:
We are not afraid. Everyone has a right to be here. Everyone has a right to be alive. No one has a right to be killed.
Local television also documented the aftermath.
This is what WCVB Channel 5 Boston reported:
With candles and signs, hundreds in Biddeford marched together as the family of Johan Sebastian Guerrero grieves. The twenty-six-year-old husband and father from Colombia was shot and killed by ICE agents this morning.
They’re terrified and they are trying to figure out what to do next.
I just heard really loud bangs and I kind of looked out the window and here we go with tons of cops.
New video shows the moment a white car is going in circles in the intersection as agents walk over.
All of a sudden all these plainclothes vested men started running down the street, abandoning their cars kind of everywhere.
Maine Senator Angus King says the Secretary of Homeland Security told him the man shot by ICE was not their target. Immigration advocates say he was authorized to work in the United States and had a Social Security number. But in a statement, DHS says it was conducting surveillance, saying a car left the residence, but when the driver didn’t stop, an officer started shooting, fearing for public safety.
Not one word that comes out of the Department of Homeland Security should be accepted without scrutiny. This is a corrupt agency that, increasingly, appears to operate outside the law.
Law enforcement officers, including ICE agents, are not supposed to fire into moving vehicles except under the most extreme, life-threatening circumstances. Looking at the video that has been released so far, there is no obvious evidence that such circumstances existed. That is precisely why body cameras matter. That is precisely why transparency matters. And that is precisely why so many questions remain unanswered.
The shooting in Maine marked the second time in a single week that ICE agents used deadly force. It is also at least the ninth death linked to Donald’s immigration crackdown.
My suspicion is that the real number is significantly higher.
We still have remarkably little visibility into what is happening inside ICE detention facilities, where transparency has steadily disappeared and independent oversight has become increasingly difficult.
Just days earlier, federal immigration agents fatally shot longtime Houston resident Lorenzo Salgado Araujo while pursuing him through Houston’s East End. Authorities initially claimed he had attempted to use his vehicle as a weapon against ICE officers.
Video evidence tells a far more complicated story.
This is what NBC News reported:
New video shows the clearest images yet of what led up to the deadly shooting of fifty-two-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by ICE agents. This video posted by his son shows Araujo leaving for work that morning. Surveillance video later picks him up turning a corner, being tailed by a dark SUV that appears to try to get around the van. Another angle shows a second SUV cutting through a parking lot to catch up. Moments later, the vehicles circle back around and ICE agents appear to pull someone from the van. Salgado is then seen on the ground moments after being shot.
DHS initially said Salgado weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE officer who fired in self-defense. That is simply false.
Tonight, Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia says the acting ICE director told her Salgado wasn’t the target.
Once again, the man who died was reportedly not even the person ICE had been looking for.
ICE was searching for someone subject to a final removal order whom officers believed had entered the van.
That explanation raises even more disturbing questions.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire has since said the FBI is refusing to share evidence with the Houston Police Department, preventing local investigators from conducting what should be a routine homicide investigation.
This is what Mayor Whitmire said:
The FBI has all the evidence that would normally go into an HPD or other law enforcement agency’s investigation. They have the evidence. In this instance, the van, the passengers, the deceased, and they’re tightly controlling it. We’ve reached out to them and asked them, share that information with HPD.
That should alarm every American regardless of political affiliation.
When deadly force is used by federal agents, transparency should increase, not disappear. Evidence should be shared with investigators, not withheld from them. Public confidence depends upon independent investigations, especially when the government itself is responsible for taking a human life.
None of this should have happened.
Johan Sebastian Guerrero should still be alive.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo should still be alive.
Every other person who has died during these operations should still be alive.
That remains true even if the individuals ICE was attempting to arrest had committed crimes because this country still has something called due process.
The Constitution guarantees that people accused of crimes are entitled to have those accusations tested in a court of law. They are entitled to legal representation. They are entitled to present evidence in their own defense. They are entitled to have guilt determined by a judge or jury, not by an armed federal agent making a split-second decision on the side of a road.
Increasingly, however, ICE agents appear to be operating with the blessing of Tom Homan, Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and the rest of the Trump regime as though those constitutional protections no longer matter.
They are behaving as judge, jury, and executioner.
That is incompatible with any functioning democracy.
Going forward, anybody who is serious about seeking public office in the United States, whether in the House of Representatives or the Senate, should be prepared to answer a very simple question.
What are you prepared to do about ICE?
In my view, every candidate who claims to believe in democracy and the Constitution should commit to doing everything within their power to defund the agency in its current form.
ICE has become so deeply corrupted by violence, secrecy, and authoritarianism that meaningful reform no longer appears possible. Institutions that repeatedly escape accountability while accumulating greater power rarely reform themselves. They become more abusive, more insulated, and more dangerous.
There has to be a better way.
The only way to find it is to start over.
We cannot trust anything coming from this government, ICE, or the DoJ. DOGE has stolen our information, and violations of common laws are rampant, and ignored by this President. And it’s all lies. We are living in the Wild West. And, hopefully, it’s only a matter of time before the bad guys get run out of town.
This is SO TOTALLY WRONG! These are employees of our government, which means they are our employees paid with our tax dollars. They are breaking laws, endangering American citizens, killing and maiming people and they AREN'T ACCOUNTABLE TO STATE AND COMMUNITY LAW ENFORCEMENT ????? That is pure, unadulterated BULL. They are not the SS - yet - and as long as we are paying these nimrods and their bosses, ALL OF THEM darn well better be able to answer for every bit of distress and damage they create IN OUR NAME.