further challenges how thoroughly<\/a> the Department of Homeland Security has vetted recruits as it went on a hiring spree to help carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.<\/p>\nAt least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents since Trump launched the crackdown after retaking office, including 25-year-old Johan Sebasti\u00e1n Dur\u00e1n Guerrero, a Colombian national who was shot and killed by Brouillette on Monday while in his car near his home in the coastal Maine city of Biddeford.<\/p>\n
DHS, which hasn’t released the name of the officer who killed Dur\u00e1n Guerrero, has said the \u201cvehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brouillette didn\u2019t respond to text messages or an email seeking comment. Three relatives who said they spoke to him since the shooting, including an ex-wife and daughter, said he told them he acted in self-defense.<\/p>\n
When reached for comment about Brouillette’s record and his role in Monday’s shooting, ICE spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement that, \u201cWe will never confirm or deny attempts to dox our law enforcement officers,” and that \u201cThe ICE officer in question has nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience with required training including use of force training.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House referred all questions about the shooting and Brouillette to ICE.<\/p>\n
A new career in ICE <\/p>\n
Brouillette, 37, told his ex-wife Ashley Brouillette late last year that he had been hired by ICE. She said that because of his long history of psychiatric issues, she thought he was having a mental health episode and she didn’t believe him. She didn\u2019t realize he\u2019d been telling the truth until this week, when videos began circulating online of the moments surrounding the shooting.<\/p>\n
Ashley Brouillette told the AP that she spoke to her ex-husband in a Facebook audio call, and he acknowledged that he had killed Dur\u00e1n Guerrero. Their 18-year-old daughter, Madison Brouillette, also told the AP that her father called her Wednesday and said that he shot and killed Dur\u00e1n Guerrero.<\/p>\n
David and Ashley Brouillette were high school sweethearts who got married in 2007. She said she divorced him in 2009 because he had become physically violent with her, which began after she got pregnant with their daughter.<\/p>\n
According to Ashley Brouillette, he once threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child \u2014 an incident her mother Avis Collins also recounted.<\/p>\n
The abuse continued after she left him, she said.<\/p>\n
David Brouillette doesn’t appear to have a criminal record in Maine, as a check with the Maine Department of Public Safety returned no records for him.<\/p>\n
But hundreds of family court records obtained from the Augusta District Court clerk\u2019s office detail years of allegations of physical and verbal abuse raised by his second ex-wife on behalf of herself and his daughters.<\/p>\n
The ex-wife \u2014 whom the AP is not identifying because she fears retaliation \u2014 alleged that he had stalked and harassed her and physically and verbally abused his daughter, according to multiple requests for temporary protection orders. Brouillette tackled his teenage daughter and smashed spaghetti in her hair, and during another outburst, he dragged his daughter around the house as she cried, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression,\u201d she wrote in an application for a temporary protective order on behalf of his teenage daughter which a judge granted in 2021.<\/p>\n
In court filings, David Brouillette said that his second ex-wife had slandered him.<\/p>\n
His oldest daughter, Madison Brouillette, said she also witnessed her dad\u2019s volatility.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched my dad struggle a lot with a lot of things,\u201d she told the AP. She said she came home from school once and he told her he had been sitting on a tree stump with a gun to his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t really, truly take care of yourself, there\u2019s no way you can protect other people. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
An immediate relative of David Brouillette who spoke on the condition that their name not be used said he was diagnosed with manic bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder as a child \u2014 a diagnosis that Ashley Brouillette confirmed. The immediate relative described him as \u201cextremely mentally ill” and said he attempted suicide twice at age 12 and was hospitalized multiple times.<\/p>\n
The relative said they’ve been estranged for years, after they broke off contact because they feared he would harm them. He did not respond to their outreach this week, the relative added.<\/p>\n
A military career and law enforcement aspirations<\/p>\n
Growing up in Gardiner, a city of about 6,000 people roughly 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Biddeford, where Monday’s shooting occurred, David Brouillette was enchanted by law enforcement and the military, his relatives said.<\/p>\n
High school yearbook photos show he was a member of the school\u2019s Naval Junior ROTC, and he wrote that he planned to go to college and become a police officer.<\/p>\n
Brouillette was initially rejected by military recruiters because of his mental health diagnoses, but recruiters encouraged him to go off his medications for a year and reapply, which he did, his immediate relative said. <\/p>\n
He was eventually able to enlist.<\/p>\n
According to U.S. military records, Brouillette enlisted as a chemical equipment repairer in the Maine Army National Guard but then changed jobs to be a medical logistics specialist. He was in the Guard from November 2007 until January 2010, according to records provided by the Pentagon.<\/p>\n
A 2009 article in the Kennebec Journal listed Brouillette as a private in the Maine Army National Guard\u2019s 152nd Maintenance Company in Augusta.<\/p>\n
In January 2010 he joined the regular Army as a human intelligence collector. Brouillette deployed to Afghanistan from May 2012 to February 2013 and eventually left the Army as a sergeant in December 2015.<\/p>\n
His immediate relative believes Brouillette’s time abroad worsened his emotional struggles: \u201cAfghanistan destroyed him — trained him to be a killing monster, a machine. They took someone who was extremely mentally ill and turned him into a killing machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life after the Army<\/p>\n
In March 2025, Brouillette passed an exam to become a real estate sales agent. His license was active until December. In a Facebook post, Realty of Maine announced Brouillette would be working in the firm\u2019s Bangor office.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid lives in Maine after retiring from the United States Army,\u201d said the post, which has since been deleted. Brouillette is no longer listed as an agent on the firm\u2019s website. Messages seeking comment were left for Realty of Maine.<\/p>\n
In March, the Maine agency that handles child support matters filed a lien against him, public records show. The filing suggests that Brouillette may have been in line for a permanent impairment or disability settlement.<\/p>\n
In late 2025, around the time he joined ICE, his ex-wife Ashley said he left a three-minute voicemail mocking her for taking out a restraining order against him. According to the message she shared with AP, he repeatedly called her \u201cdisgusting\u201d and suggested that she and the other women and girls in her \u201cbloodline\u201d should die.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd all of you should have your f\u2014\u2014–g throats cut,\u201d the voicemail said. \u201cYeah, you should. Am I threatening that I\u2019m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f\u2014\u2014-g throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she cut off contact with him until Wednesday, when his picture began circulating online<\/p>\n
She reached out to his current wife on Facebook and they spoke on the phone for several minutes. Her ex-husband spoke with her, according to cellphone screenshots of the phone exchange she shared with the AP. He acknowledged he had fatally shot Dur\u00e1n Guerrero.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was asking if I could tell them that he was a good person and not to talk about the abuse and stuff that I had endured well with him and he said that the most important thing is his character right now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said he told her he is now hiding in protective custody.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked him why he did it,\u201d she said. \u201cHe said it was a justified shooting. The guy was trying to run him over with a car.\u201d<\/p>\n
His daughter also said he told her it was justified.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he sees himself as a killer,\u201d Madison Brouillette said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think he thinks that he genuinely did the right thing,\u201d she added. \u201cAll he said was that he did what he had to do. He said that he had to protect himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Brook reported from New Orleans, Sisak reported from New York and Galofaro reported from Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUGUSTA, Maine \u2013 The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[327748,4,450,327749,12,451,327747,237443,3,452,453,795],"class_list":["post-767189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-ashley-brouillette","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-david-brouillette","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-johan-sebastian-duran-guerrero","tag-lauren-bis","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}