‘They handcuffed a dead man’: Biddeford demands answers over the death of Johan Sebastian Durán Guerrero

At the intersection of Hill and Pool streets, the blood of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero — the 26-year-old Colombian who died from shots fired by an agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last Monday in the city of Biddeford, Maine — has still not been washed away.

On the pavement, someone has scrawled in chalk “This is blood” next to the stains that mark the road. Neighbors have set up an altar on the corner. Flowers, signs against ICE and messages honoring the victim — who is survived by a wife and a three-year-old daughter — express the outrage of a community that believes Durán Guerrero’s death should have been prevented.

Shortly after 7 a.m. on Monday, the young Colombian was leaving his home — which had been under surveillance by immigration agents — to go to work. The encounter turned deadly, and questions about what happened continue to trouble residents of this small, largely working-class city.

Official information took hours to arrive, and even then there were contradictions over whether Durán Guerrero was the person ICE had been seeking. A friend of the deceased told the local paper Portland Press Herald that the Colombian was still paying for the Kia he was driving, which was registered to someone else. She suspects agents were looking for the vehicle’s owner.

Three days on, the facts remain unclear. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, says the agent who fired the fatal shots did so because he felt threatened. However, as in the cases of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, and more recently that of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston last week, the authorities’ account differs from the version provided by witnesses.

‘They handcuffed a dead man’

Corey Poulin received a call from police three minutes after Durán Guerrero died. His pawnshop is attached to a laundromat — the two businesses sit at the intersection where Durán Guerrero was killed. The agents were not wearing body cameras and requested footage from his store’s security camera.

“You can see the car circling the intersection and then a white Ford Explorer ramming the vehicle to stop it from turning. We saw them pull the person from the car and handcuff him, but I think by then he was already dead,” he tells EL PAÍS. “When they pulled the body out of the car, it fell to the ground. The head, the face… everything. They handcuffed a dead man.”

Durán Guerrero lived a few yards from where he died. Neighbors remember him as a kind young man who lived with his wife and three-year-old daughter, who has now been left fatherless. “He used to come here to wash his clothes with his daughter. We didn’t know him personally because he didn’t speak our language,” Poulin explains. Durán Guerrero worked as a DoorDash delivery driver and cleaned a veterinary clinic to support his family, a profile that hardly matches the dangerous criminals the Donald Trump administration says ICE is targeting.

Outside the pawnshop, a sign displays a banner reading: “Our president is: A. Fascist; B. Rapist; C. Pedophile; D. All of the above.” The letter “D” is marked.

More signs propped against the wall across the street form the small memorial that residents have created at the site of the shooting. “Johan Sebastián Guerrero matters,” “We are better than this,” and “Chinga la migra” (Fuck ICE) are among the messages displayed alongside photographs and drawings dedicated to the deceased Colombian father. People stop by to leave flowers or, as one woman who declined to give her name put it, “to pay respect to the dead.” She is not from Biddeford but lives in Connecticut and is among the tourists who come to this coastal region to enjoy the seaside during the height of summer. She never expected a tragedy like this to unfold during her holiday.

“If there is no training, if there are no limits on their [ICE’s] behavior… I don’t know all the details of what happened because they weren’t wearing cameras, but I don’t think anyone deserves to die at the end of that interaction. To find death while you’re driving your car to work in such a quiet, peaceful town. Where does this violence come from? Why?” she asks, visibly emotional.

The need to rely on Poulin’s recording would not have arisen if agents had been wearing body cameras, as the Department of Homeland Security pledged months earlier. “It’s unacceptable, given how much money that agency is allocated. The Biddeford police department’s budget is under $10 million, and we can provide that. Why won’t the federal government?” says Liam Lafontaine, Biddeford’s mayor, in remarks to EL PAÍS.

“I am calling for a thorough, transparent and complete investigation, and I request that the primary law enforcement agencies continue to participate so we can have a fair and independent inquiry. The family deserves justice, and so does our city,” says Lafontaine. The mayor has been in contact with Maine Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, and the state’s senators — Independent Angus King and Republican Susan Collins — who have called for a transparent investigation involving state law enforcement agencies.

Lafontaine welcomed ICE’s announcement on Tuesday that it would suspend traffic checkpoints it had been using to stop migrants, in response to the two deaths that occurred within less than a week. “These traffic stops are dangerous and the tactics ICE uses are not safe. They certainly did not make Biddeford a safer place on Monday morning,” he says.

Before speaking to this newspaper, the mayor had said in a statement he hoped the ban would be “permanent, not a temporary public relations measure by ICE.”

However, the pause was short-lived. On Wednesday morning, President Trump demanded the agency reverse the decision. “The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done,” the president wrote on his social platform, Truth Social. “WE CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective crime fighting tools, the TRAFFIC STOPS! Once we do, we are playing right into criminal’s [sic] hands. The radical left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. ICE, be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important work.”

Protests and vigils

Durán Guerrero’s death has left an indelible mark on Biddeford, a city with a significant immigrant presence integrated into the community. “They own businesses, work in our schools and at our hospital, and are civic and religious leaders in our town. The immigrant community is important and vital to Biddeford,” says the mayor.

This city is not as large as Minneapolis, which saw massive demonstrations after the deaths of Good and Pretti in January, but residents have also taken to the streets to protest. The latest vigil was scheduled for Wednesday in Mechanics Park, Biddeford’s social gathering spot. Protests have spread to other parts of the state. In neighboring Scarborough, residents protested in front of the ICE detention center there, and hundreds marched in Portland, about 15 miles away.

Gigi Gull, a 46-year-old accountant, is among those who have protested against ICE. He came to the intersection where Durán Guerrero died to leave a bouquet of flowers. He did not know the victim, but he begins to cry when talking about what happened. “I drove by the area right after it happened, before many authorities arrived, and I saw Sebastián lying on the ground. It’s a very sad moment for our country,” he says, barely holding back tears.

Local residents want answers, but there is little confidence that they will get them. “I would expect a transparent investigation, but I don’t know if that is even possible in the current context we are living in,” Gull says.

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