Federal immigration agents reportedly shot and killed a driver in Maine, according to a state official and a witness who says he saw an officer draw a gun in the street.
In a brief statement Monday morning, Maine’s Democratic House Speaker Ryan Fecteau said “a person was killed” in Biddeford, roughly 15 miles south of Portland. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “was involved,” he said.
“State Police and the Department of Public Safety are now on scene to gather details and would expect the FBI to investigate as well,” according to Fecteau.
Images from the scene posted to social media show an unmarked white SUV with flashing police lights that appears to have rammed the passenger’s side of a white sedan, which is parked at an angle in the middle of an intersection.
Agents in green vests reading “POLICE” can be seen assisting a person who is lying down on the street beside the car.
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. 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. “I just heard the popping, but I did see him draw his gun,” he told the Press Herald.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment.
The incident is at least the 11th fatal shooting involving federal immigration agents since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second administration last year 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.
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.
“The Trump administration is fulfilling the promise that President Trump was elected on — deporting criminal illegal aliens,” a White House official told The Independent earlier this month.
This is a developing story
