The father of a Colombian immigrant shot and killed by a federal agent in Maine on Monday described him as \u201ca good person raised with strong values,\u201d who worked two jobs to support his wife and 3-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a great vision for getting ahead, so many dreams to fulfill,\u201d Omar Duran, the father of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, told Noticias Caracol, a Colombian news outlet, on Tuesday, speaking in Spanish. \u201cMy son is a wonderful son \u2014 I don\u2019t know why they did that to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Guerrero, 25, lived in Biddeford, a small city south of Portland, where he worked as a food delivery driver and a late-night cleaner at a veterinary clinic. Mr. Duran said his son was in the United States legally and was authorized to work.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday morning, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Mr. Guerrero had \u201cillegally entered the United States on Sept. 1, 2023, via the southern border and was released into the country under the Biden Administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement went on to say, \u201cTo be clear, work authorization does not confer legal status in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agency did not provide specifics about Mr. Guerrero\u2019s immigration case beyond the statement, and it was not clear how he would have been approved to work. But Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Association of Immigration Lawyers, said that many people who have work permits have applied for asylum; if their application has been pending for 180 days, he said, they are eligible to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have an application for asylum pending, you can legally remain in the United States,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact is, you have protection from deportation and the legal right to remain in the United States while your case is pending.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joan Sebastian GuerreroCredit…via Facebook<\/p>\n
In the hours after he was killed on the block where he lived, details emerged to suggest that immigration agents may have mistaken him for another person. A spokesman for Senator Angus King of Maine said on Monday that Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, had told the senator that the agents had been looking for someone else.<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security said that ICE had been \u201cconducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal,\u201d but it did not identify the person ICE was seeking. In its statement, Homeland Security referred to Mr. Guerrero as an \u201cillegal alien\u201d who \u201cattempted to flee the scene\u201d but did not name him, and provided no further information about his immigration status.<\/p>\n
Mr. Guerrero was from Bucaramanga, a mountainside city of about 615,000 people in north-central Colombia. In Biddeford, he lived in a weathered three-story apartment building next to a coin-operated laundromat, which sits at the intersection where he was shot.<\/p>\n
He and his wife and daughter would often exchange greetings with other neighborhood residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were always so happy and so polite,\u201d Don Gregoire, 69, a hairstylist, said of Mr. Guerrero and his wife. \u201cI\u2019d be watering my flowers in front of the house, and they would stop and say, \u2018Very nice flowers.\u2019 And their little girl would wave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Guerrero had been a deliveryman for DoorDash, the company confirmed. In a statement, it said that he had not been working on the morning of his death.<\/p>\n
The killing prompted furious protests in Biddeford and in nearby Scarborough, site of an ICE facility. <\/p>\n
Maine\u2019s congressional delegation called for an urgent investigation of the shooting in a letter sent Tuesday to Joseph V. Cuffari, inspector general of the Homeland Security Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe facts surrounding this tragedy remain a matter of significant local concern and necessitate a thorough, objective accounting,\u201d Mr. King, an independent, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, and Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, both Democrats, wrote in the letter. \u201cGiven the gravity of the situation and the understandable anxiety within the Biddeford community, we urge you to prioritize this investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has ordered ICE officers to halt most vehicle stops<\/a>. Ms. Collins said in a statement on Tuesday that she had urged Mr. Mullin to take the action in the wake of Mr. Guerrero\u2019s killing, the second<\/a> fatal shooting in two weeks by federal agents making traffic stops. <\/p>\n But Tom Homan, the White House border czar, downplayed the order on Tuesday, saying it was a temporary action, and President Trump said on social media<\/a> on Wednesday that giving up traffic stops \u201cwon\u2019t happen on my watch.\u201d <\/p>\n Last week, an ICE agent fatally shot a Mexican immigrant, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, during a traffic stop in Houston.<\/a> The Homeland Security Department later said that Mr. Araujo was not the operation\u2019s intended target<\/a>.<\/p>\n An online fund-raiser established by friends of the Guerrero family had raised $150,000 by Tuesday afternoon to help \u201ccover legal expenses, funeral costs, and the repatriation of his body to Colombia, where his parents are waiting to lay him to rest,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Some of Mr. Guerrero\u2019s neighbors shared jarring details of a violent and chaotic scene on Monday morning: the sound of multiple gunshots and the sight of a white car, pierced by bullet holes, making slow circles around an intersection with Mr. Guerrero still in the driver\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n Shortly after the immigration agents pulled him from the car, some saw Mr. Guerrero\u2019s wife, Karo Rojas, kneeling and wailing near her husband in the street as their daughter looked on.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Ms. Rojas shared photos of the three of them, smiling, on social media.<\/p>\n \u201cI will love you all of the days of my life,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Heather Beasley Doyle, Murray Carpenter, Miriam Jordan and Bayliss Wagner contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The father of a Colombian immigrant shot and killed by a federal agent in Maine on Monday described…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[29528,113040,1694,30354,113038,11595,9204,113039,9,11,10,1695,78414],"class_list":["post-296883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-asylum","tag-biddeford-me","tag-demonstrations","tag-federal-actions-in-us-cities","tag-guerrero","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-us","tag-immigration-and-emigration","tag-joan-sebastian-d-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-protests-and-riots","tag-right-of"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}