On the morning of July 13, 2026, Joan Sebastian Guerrero — a 26-year-old Colombian father with a Social Security number and a legal right to work in the United States — left his home in Biddeford, Maine to go to his job. ICE agents were waiting in the neighborhood, looking for a completely different person. By the end of that encounter, Guerrero was dead, pulled bleeding from his car — and, according to a witness who reached him first, his last words were: “I tried to stop.”
The Man Agents Were Not Looking For
The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged, through Senator Angus King‘s office, that Guerrero was not the subject of the immigration warrant agents were trying to execute that morning. Agents had the neighborhood under surveillance targeting a different individual entirely. Guerrero lived nearby and happened to be leaving for work. He had a Social Security number, was legally authorized to be employed in the U.S., and — according to immigrant rights groups including the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine — had no reason to expect what was coming. He leaves behind a wife and a young daughter.
This detail alone separates the Biddeford case from the standard immigration enforcement narrative. The question is not whether Guerrero was undocumented or not. The question is how a man who was never the target of any operation ended up dead, and why two entirely different versions of those final minutes exist — one from the government, one from everyone who was standing on that street.
Two Versions, One Outcome
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated that agents attempted to conduct a vehicle stop on a car leaving the surveilled residence, and that the driver “weaponized” the vehicle by attempting to run over an agent — prompting the officer to fire through the windshield. The agents involved were not wearing body cameras. That last part is not a minor footnote; it means the only visual record of what happened does not exist.
Witnesses on the scene described something different. Multiple neighbors said agents rammed Guerrero’s sedan before drawing weapons. One bystander, who reached the car after the shots, reported seeing it spinning slowly through the intersection — not accelerating toward anyone, but drifting, already out of control, because the driver had already been hit. A nearby resident who ran to Guerrero immediately after the shooting said he heard him say, clearly, “I tried to stop,” as agents pulled him from the vehicle. The FBI, Maine State Police, and the DHS Office of Inspector General are now investigating. The Colombian Embassy’s formal demand for answers adds diplomatic weight to a case that is already straining federal credibility.
The Colombian Embassy has formally requested information and clarification from U.S. authorities. Large protests have broken out across Maine. None of that brings Guerrero back, but it does signal that this incident will not be quietly filed away.
Six Days Apart, the Same Story
What makes Biddeford impossible to dismiss as an isolated incident is the date: July 7, 2026. That is when ICE agents in Houston, Texas shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican citizen, under nearly identical circumstances — also driving to work, also not the subject of the warrant agents were executing. Two men, two different nationalities, two different states, six days apart, the same basic chain of events: ICE operation targeting someone else, a bystander in a vehicle, agents who fired, a dead man who had nothing to do with the warrant.
That pattern — two fatal shootings of non-targets in under a week — is what has moved this beyond grief and into something closer to a systemic accountability crisis. When one case like this happens, it is a tragedy. When the second one happens before the first has even been fully investigated, it becomes a question about what ICE’s operational protocols actually allow.