Maine officials are examining a fatal Monday morning shooting that state House Speaker Ryan Fecteau said allegedly involved U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
WASHINGTON — An ICE agent shot and killed a 26-year-old man in Maine on Monday morning, immigrant rights advocates and state officials said.
According to the office of Maine Sen. Angus King, the man who died was not the person ICE agents had been seeking. King’s office said it received that information from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
“Since Angus King held his meeting with the Maine Press Core, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Senator King’s office that the person that was killed was not the intended target of the operation in Biddeford today,” King’s office said in a statement to NCM.
The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine also issued a joint statement identifying the victim as a Colombian man who had come to Maine to live and work.
“Presente! confirmed that the young man was authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number. He was a member of our community, a neighbor, and a human being whose life was cut tragically short,” the statement said.
“I know that situations like these are alarming and frightening,” the governor wrote. “The Maine State Police are at the scene 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 this morning.”
The Press Herald, a local newspaper, reported that residents in the area appeared visibly shaken after the shooting.
Mary Hayes, a resident who lives near where the incident took place, told the Press Herald she could see the aftermath of the shooting near her home.
“There’s a dead body down there,” she reportedly cried to her neighbor. “I saw it. I saw his foot.”
Hayes told the Press Herald she was shaken by the events.
“I mean, we live in Maine. We don’t expect this to happen here,” she said. “What have we come to?“
Last Tuesday, a ICE officer in Houston fatally shot a Mexican immigrant after he was pursued by federal agents driving unmarked vehicles while he was taking his crew to their latest job site.
Federal agents were looking for someone else when they tried to stop Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s white van, Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia said, citing a briefing she received from ICE’s acting director. The Department of Homeland Security has said an ICE officer fired at the van in self-defense after Salgado Araujo, who officials described as an “illegal alien,” rammed an ICE vehicle. They have not provided evidence to support these claims.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
