A man who was ordered to leave the U.S. was shot and killed in his car in Maine on Monday by an agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Maine Sen.
Angus King said, marking the second time in a week that ICE officers have used deadly force in the U.S. King was briefed on the shooting in Biddeford, Maine, by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the senator said during a news conference in Portland before catching a flight to Washington. He said the deceased man had been given an order to leave the United States.
King initially said the man was the target of an arrest warrant based on his immigration status, but his office later told CBS News that Mullin gave King new information that the man actually wasn't the target. Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine said in a social media video that she was also told "the person who was shot by the ICE officer was not the person they had an order to pick up." An immigrant rights group said the man killed in the shooting was Colombian.
"He was in a vehicle, pulled out in the vehicle, and the term the secretary used was 'weaponized' the vehicle," King told reporters. "He was shot by an ICE agent. What I said to the secretary was we want a full, transparent and open investigation of this matter." The agents involved in the shooting weren't wearing body cameras, King said, which he said concerned him.
Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said on social media she was told that the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general will take the lead on investigating the shooting, with help from the FBI. The state attorney general's office, which is also investigating the shooting, said in a statement that the man "attempted to flee in a vehicle in the direction of" an officer with ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations directorate, according to initial statements collected by investigators.
The officer who opened fire will be placed on leave, according to the attorney general's office. The Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition identified the person who was shot as a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the U.S. and had been issued a Social Security number.
A neighbor, Nelson Elias, told reporters that the man was married with a young daughter who's about 2 or 3 years old. A photo from the Portland Press Herald shows a car behind police tape with four bullet holes in the windshield on the driver's side. The Press Herald also posted a video that it reported was from the scene of the shooting.
The video, which was recorded from a nearby vehicle, shows a white car slowly driving in a circle in an intersection near two vehicles with flashing lights. Two people approach the car while it's moving, and one person appears to grab onto the driver's side door handle before the video ends. A separate video posted by the Bangor Daily News shows two people wearing police vests pulling the driver from the white car after it stopped.
The driver's body drops to the street. "The question is, what did he do with his vehicle?" King told reporters. "Were officers threatened?
Were the threats rising to the level that justified deadly force? That's what this investigation is all about, and I certainly intend to stay after it to do everything I can to be sure the investigation is as transparent and thorough as possible." Em Akerley, who lives near where the shooting happened, told WMTW-TV she initially thought she heard a car backfiring and went to her window when the sound continued. "I see a small white car being corralled by two men trying to stop it from losing control around the intersection and, all of a sudden, all these plainclothes, vested men sort of running down the street, abandoning their cars kind of everywhere with regular people behind them," she said.
She said she didn't see the man who was shot. "I don't know what he did, but he didn't deserve to be executed in the street," Akerley said. "I didn't hear anything until the gunshots." Project Relief Maine, an immigrant advocacy group, said in a statement on social media that the person who was killed was one of their community members.
"We are in contact with the family and are committed to supporting them during this unimaginable time," the group said. "This was a young person whose life was cut short, and our community must come together to stand with their loved ones and ensure they are not alone. They must get justice." Maine Gov.
Janet Mills said she was briefed on the shooting. "I know that situations like these are alarming and frightening," she said in a statement . The Maine State Police was at the scene working with the state attorney general's office, the state Office of Chief Medical Examiner and federal officials, Mills said.
State House Speaker Ryan Fecteau had said on Facebook that the state Department of Public Safety was also at the scene gathering details. The Biddeford Police Department said in a statement that it responded to an incident involving ICE personnel at the intersection of Pool and Hill streets and was providing security at the scene. The department directed inquiries about the incident to ICE.
The shooting comes after an ICE officer shot and killed a Mexican man in his work van last week in Houston. In that incident, security camera footage obtained by CBS affiliate KHOU-TV shows ICE officers in unmarked vehicles followed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo after he picked up co-workers for a construction job. The Department of Homeland Security said officers thought one of the men resembled someone they were looking for and that Araujo attempted to run over an officer who fired in self-defense.
An attorney for two of the men in the van said the ICE officer fired into the vehicle through a window on the passenger side. "Lorenzo had already parked the van. The ICE agent reaches in, fires a shot directly in front of Victor's face, strikes Lorenzo on the side," attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra said in an Instagram video .
The ICE officers involved in the shooting weren't wearing body cameras and didn't have dashboard cameras in their vehicles. The FBI is investigating the shooting. Supreme Court lets Trump strip deportation protections from Syrians, Haitians Federal court allows ICE to expand expedited deportations nationwide Trump plan would increase citizenship application fee by $570 Protecting the right of birthright citizenship U.S.
plans expansion of denaturalization push, aiming for 250 cases by fall The Right Response to the Minneapolis ICE Shooting The Legal Stakes for the Minneapolis ICE Shooter U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
