A person was killed Monday in an ICE-involved shooting in Maine, marking the second slaying this month tied to the deportation agency.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills confirmed the fatal shooting, calling the situation “alarming and frightening,” and vowing to have state authorities be part of the investigation into what happened.
Details were still sparse Monday afternoon, and neither U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement nor Homeland Security, its parent agency, had commented.
But immigrant-rights groups identified the man who was killed as a 26-year-old from Colombia.
Sen. Angus King, who represents the state, said DHS told him the man had a pending deportation order against him.
The senator said he was told the man was in a vehicle that he “weaponized,” which is when an ICE agent shot him.
“He wasn’t a bystander or inadvertently, it was the person they were searching for. And the question is, what did he do with his vehicle? Were officers threatened?” Mr. King said.
Images of the scene showed a white SUV pushed up against a white Kia sedan, with a body lying on the ground feet away from the sedan’s driver’s door. The SUV has a spotlight over the driver’s sideview mirror, as is common with law enforcement vehicles.
The shooting quickly became an issue in the race for Maine’s other Senate seat, occupied by Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican who has backed President Trump’s call for more funding for ICE.
The shooting follows one last week in Houston, where DHS said ICE tried to conduct a stop on a van, the driver tried to evade and eventually “weaponized” his vehicle to try to run over an officer. The officer opened fire, killing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, an illegal immigrant from Mexico.
The pair of deaths in such a short time is reminiscent of Minneapolis in January, when DHS personnel carrying out Mr. Trump’s deportation surge killed two U.S. citizens in a span of days.
Those slayings remain under investigation with no word on when federal authorities will complete them.
The family of Salgado Araujo, killed in Houston, is also disputing ICE’s account of that shooting, as are Congressional Democrats.
In a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, they said the department’s initial sketchy claims about the two Minneapolis shootings raise skepticism about the department’s version of events in Houston.
“Passengers in the vehicle assert that Mr. Salgado Araujo never attempted to ram officers with his vehicle,” wrote the Democrats, led by Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, the ranking lawmaker on the House Homeland Security Committee
The Democrats also said ICE seems to be pushing others who were in the van with Salgado Araujo to quickly self-deport, potentially removing witnesses.
Houston Public Media reported that none of the officers involved were wearing body cameras. DHS blamed the partial government shutdown earlier this spring for a lack of funding for the cameras.
Mr. King, the Maine senator, said Monday that there were no body cameras in that shooting either.
He said he had been told they are being distributed nationwide, but hadn’t reached the officers involved in the incident.
ICE surged into Maine for a deportation operation earlier this year but ended it early, amid pressure from Ms. Collins, the Republican senator running for re-election.
After Monday’s shooting, she released a statement calling for “a full and impartial investigation of what happened.”
Protesters flocked to her office to demand she oppose ICE.
The new shootings have put Mr. Mullin under scrutiny and sparked a new round of demands to constrain ICE.
“Pull ICE off of all streets in all communities, NOW,” said Lynn Tramonte, executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “They enforce civil laws. There is no reason they should be allowed to invade our communities with guns.”
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