ICE Halts Vehicle Stops After Biddeford Shooting Kills Colombian National

Aspen —“Fearing for public safety,” the ICE officer fired.

That was the official explanation from the Department of Homeland Security after Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national, was shot and killed in Biddeford, Maine. But to hear it from locals standing outside the ICE detention center in Scarborough, the narrative didn’t quite match what they saw.

“He tried to use his vehicle as a weapon,” Maine Sen. Angus King told reporters hours after the shooting, relaying what Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had said. The officer was trying to serve an arrest warrant for someone else inside the house, but Durán Guerrero’s car moved. The officer fired.

Todd Chretien, an organizer for the protests that have drawn hundreds to the coast between Biddeford and Portland, wasn’t buying it.

“These people are killers and they must leave our state now,” Chretien told the crowd holding signs reading “Stop the murder” and “End this terror.”

The shooting in Biddeford was the second deadly force incident involving ICE in just over a week. A motorist had been killed by an officer in Houston the previous week. The pattern has renewed criticism of the agency’s tactics, prompting the Trump administration to order a suspension of most vehicle stops.

The order came Tuesday, confirmed by a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive law enforcement operations. The suspension isn’t absolute. Officers can still stop vehicles when executing a criminal warrant or working with partner agencies, but the default mode has shifted from proactive stops to more cautious observation.

Questions remain about the specifics of the Biddeford encounter, largely because the officers involved didn’t have body cameras. Without video evidence, details about proximity and intent are open to interpretation. How close was the officer to Durán Guerrero when he fired? Did officers tell him to stop? And did he truly put the public in danger, or was his movement misinterpreted?

The diplomatic fallout has been swift. Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting a targeted killing “at the hands of the U.S. government” in a scathing post on X. Petro, who has openly quarreled with President Donald Trump, accused ICE officers of treating Durán Guerrero as “an inferior being without rights.” He urged Trump to provide a more robust explanation.

For the community in western Maine, the suspension of vehicle stops offers a moment to breathe, if not fully resolve the tension. The Department of Homeland Security stated in an X post that when ICE tried to stop a car driven by someone coming from the home, the vehicle attempted to flee and the officer fired. It was a change from King’s initial description of the event as an attempt to use the vehicle as a weapon.

ICE has stated, “We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets.”

Durán Guerrero’s death marks at least the ninth since Trump began his immigration crackdown. The suspension of vehicle stops is a tactical adjustment, but for the families in Biddeford and the wider area, it’s also a signal that the agency is listening to the pressure from both local protesters and international allies.

The math holds up: two shootings in a week, hundreds of protesters, and an immediate halt to the most visible form of enforcement. The question is whether this pause will lead to a longer-term shift in how ICE operates, or if vehicle stops will resume once the immediate political heat subsides.