ICE Agent Fatally Shoots 26-Year-Old Man in Maine

A federal immigration agent fatally shot a 26-year-old Colombian man in Maine, according to state officials and witnesses. The victim, whose name has not been publicly released, was killed shortly after 7 a.m. in Biddeford, roughly 15 miles south of Portland. He was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a Social Security number, according to immigration advocacy groups Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente!

Maine. The incident occurred when an ICE officer was conducting an enforcement operation related to a final order of removal. The officer allegedly shot the victim after he attempted to flee in a vehicle in the direction of the officer.

Lucas Scott, 18, told the Portland Press Herald that he saw ICE agents in green vests hop out of unmarked vehicles with flashing blue lights shortly after 7 a.m. As he turned to see what was happening as he passed through an intersection, he saw an agent draw a firearm and yell at a driver who “was trying to hit the ICE officer,” Scott told the newspaper. The agent then fired about four shots, he said.

Another witness, Daniel Boucher, said he saw the SUV trying to ram the smaller car. “He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher told the Press Herald. “He was talking.

He said, ‘I tried to stop.’” Witnesses described a chaotic scene, with guns drawn and a body in the street. One woman with a distressed family at the scene yelled out “you took her dad!” alongside a child who couldn’t have been older than three and still in her Bluey pajamas. Images from the scene posted to social media showed an unmarked white SUV with flashing police lights that appeared to have rammed the passenger’s side of a white sedan, which was stopped at an angle in the middle of an intersection.

Bullet holes could be seen in the windshield. The officer will be placed on leave as is standard protocol in police-involved shootings, according to the state’s Attorney General’s Office. The incident is at least the 11th fatal shooting involving federal immigration agents since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second administration and comes less than a week after the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three children who was shot in his car on his way to work in Houston.

Homeland Security has routinely justified shootings with claims that an arrest target has tried to run over agents, only for evidence to emerge that contradicts the government’s statements. Maine was among several Democratic-led states that saw a surge of federal agents under the Trump administration’s government-wide efforts to swiftly arrest and detain tens of thousands of immigrants. ICE has accelerated arrests in recent weeks, fueled by the administration’s mandate to arrest at least 2,000 people daily, while the number of people in detention has exploded to more than 63,000 immigrants in jail-like facilities on any given day.

Daily arrests peaked at more than 2,400 last month. Maine Governor Janet Mills said she has been briefed on the incident and that the Maine State Police are at the scene supporting and working cooperatively with the Attorney General’s Office, Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner, and Federal officials to determine the facts of what occurred. The incident has sparked outrage, with many calling for accountability and an end to ICE’s aggressive tactics.

ICE’s future and the fate of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda are central to midterm elections this fall, including in Maine, where Democrats are hoping to oust Republican Susan Collins in a bid to tip the balance of power in Congress in one of the most competitive Senate elections of 2026.