BIDDEFORD (United States), July 14 —A US immigration officer yesterday fatally shot a man identified by rights groups as a 26-year-old Colombian, an incident likely to fuel criticism of President Donald Trump’s deportation drive.
The shooting happened in Biddeford, a town of 22,000 people in the northern state of Maine, and comes a week after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot dead a Mexican man in Texas.
Maine’s attorney general’s office said initial reports suggested an ICE officer was “conducting an enforcement operation related to a final order of removal when the subject attempted to flee in a vehicle in the direction of the officer and was fatally shot.”
It said the agent would be placed on leave in line with protocol after police-involved shootings. The FBI earlier said it was also investigating.
Daniel Boucher, 71, told AFP he heard a “lot of pop, pop, pops” before seeing ICE agents pull a person from a white car with a bloodied head and face.
“At that point I clearly heard the victim say ‘I tried to stop,’ something to that effect,” he said.
“Then he was on the ground. I could only see the legs and the stomach, and at one point, I could see that his stomach stopped going, and I knew that he had expired.”
Boucher said that when he confronted one of the agents at the scene, the man had tried to run him over.
An ICE spokesperson said yesterday that officers had tried to stop a vehicle at around 7am (4am Malaysian time) yesterday after conducting surveillance of the last known address of a person with a deportation order.
“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon. The driver of the vehicle was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted. He passed away from his injuries,” they said.
‘Tragedy’
The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente Maine, which jointly identified the victim but did not name him, said the man was authorised to work in the United States.
“We will not let this death be reduced to a footnote in this administration’s enforcement statistics,” said Crystal Cron, executive director of Presente Maine.
Governor Janet Mills, citing an unconfirmed US news report that the man shot was not the intended target of the ICE operation, said she was “horrified by this tragedy.”
“This development makes this tragedy even more disturbing and infuriating, and it underscores the reckless and haphazard manner in which immigration enforcement operations are being conducted in Maine and across the country,” she wrote on X.
Images from the scene showed a police cordon in place on a residential street, with a forensics unit stationed next to a red tent. Some people placed candles and flowers on the street nearby.
Protesters rallied in the area with signs reading “ICE Out!” and gathered at the office of Maine’s other senator, Susan Collins, a member of Trump’s Republican party.
“A person has died, and their loved ones and the people of our community deserve clear answers about what happened,” Biddeford Mayor Liam LaFountain said in a statement.
Tasked with enforcing Trump’s immigration crackdown, ICE’s heavily armed agents have faced nationwide backlash for aggressive tactics, and for the shooting deaths of two US citizens this year in Minneapolis. — AFP
