ICE agent kills driver in Maine, protests over increased deportations

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shot and killed a driver in a coastal Maine town on Monday, less than a week after an ICE agent in Houston, Texas, shot and killed a man during a traffic stop as part of an intensified deportation operation.

Commenting on the shooting on Monday, nearly 12 hours after the incident, the US Department of Homeland Security said that an ICE officer, "fearing for the safety of the public," opened fire on the man as he tried to flee agents who were trying to stop his vehicle.

The Department of Homeland Security did not say how the driver could have posed a threat. The incident occurred around 7 a.m. local time in Bideford, Maine, about 15 miles south of Portland, the state's largest city.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, provided few other details, other than to say that the agents involved were "conducting targeted surveillance of the last known address of an illegal immigrant who had been issued a final order of removal."

According to the Department, “an illegal immigrant left the home in a vehicle,” after which ICE agents followed him. The agency did not say whether the person seen leaving the home was the same person whose address was under surveillance.

The department said Bideford police and the FBI "responded to the scene."

Immigrant rights groups said the man killed was a 26-year-old Colombian national who had a work permit in the United States and a Social Security number, but they did not release his name or explain how they identified him.

“This is devastating, infuriating and unacceptable,” the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said in a joint statement.

The ICE-involved killing in Maine on Monday, like the one last Tuesday in Texas, brought to at least seven the number of people killed in immigration enforcement actions since January 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to power and launched a campaign of mass deportations.

Immigration raids have intensified across the country in recent weeks. Since early June, the number of arrests made by ICE in Maine has more than quadrupled, to about 70 a day in early July, according to internal ICE data provided to Reuters by a source.

One witness, 71-year-old Daniel Bouche, a carer and part-time draftsman who lives in the centre of Bideford, told Reuters he was on the second floor of his flat when he heard what sounded like firecrackers at around 7.30am.

He ran to the window and saw a white SUV hit a smaller white car. After getting out onto the street and getting within about twenty feet, Bushe saw an ICE officer get out of the SUV, open the car door and pull the driver out, he recalled, adding that the man had blood on his face and head.

"I remember hearing the victim say, 'But I tried to stop myself,'" Bushe said, before the wounded man appeared to stop breathing.

Buše said that one of the officers at the scene appeared "very shaken, almost as if he was in shock."

Later in the day, dozens of protesters carried signs and chanted slogans as they marched about 400 yards from a park in Bideford to the office of Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins, who is running for re-election this year.

Ten protesters entered the building's lobby, chanting "ICE out!" and "Vote her out!" as well as swearing. There were no arrests or violence.

The shooting came six days after an ICE agent in Houston's predominantly Latino East End neighborhood killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop, in what the agency described as a targeted immigration enforcement operation.

ICE said after the shooting that Salgado, a Mexican citizen who had been living in the United States illegally for more than three decades, rammed his van into a law enforcement vehicle and attempted to run over the officer, who fired in self-defense.

The agency offered no evidence to support its version of events, Reuters reports. In similar cases over the past year, initial statements by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security about the use of force have been contradicted by video footage or other evidence, sometimes in court.