Shortly after 7 a.m. on Monday in the small city of Biddeford, Maine, federal immigration agents fatally shot Joan Sebastian Guerrero in his car.
Agents fired five times. No video footage has emerged that shows the events leading up to the shooting, or the killing itself, and many questions remain unanswered, such as whether more than one agent fired a weapon. But several videos provide new detail of Mr. Guerrero’s encounter with the agents, including that he was shot before his vehicle rolled into an intersection.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Guerrero, a Colombian national, had been shot after he had attempted to flee in his car from federal immigration agents, and that an agent had fired at him “fearing for public safety.” In a separate communication to Congressional members, the department claimed that Mr. Guerrero had “weaponized his vehicle toward law enforcement.”
In other recent incidents, Immigration and Custom Enforcements officials have also claimed that motorists have “weaponized” their vehicles, which has sometimes been contradicted by video analysis and witness accounts.
In a surveillance video obtained by The New York Times, yelling and then five gunshots can be heard. Voices are heard saying, “Move it, let’s go,” and “Back, Back!” just before the shots ring out. Neither Mr. Guerrero nor the federal immigration agents are visible.
Seconds later, surveillance footage captured by a pawnshop shows a white Kia slowly moving into an intersection, with two federal immigration agents on foot surrounding the car. The vehicle then turns and moves at low speed in a series of circular loops.
The ICE agents try to open the door on the driver’s side of the vehicle, but are unable to.
After the vehicle’s third loop, an agent runs up the road. The footage then shows an ICE agent arriving in an S.U.V. and attempting to block the Kia with the second vehicle, eventually stopping it.
Three ICE agents then surround the car, with one pointing his weapon at the driver’s-side window. The footage does not show any shots being fired.
The agents open the car door and pull out Mr. Guerrero, who falls to the ground.
Four bullet holes are visible in the front windshield of Mr. Guerrero’s car.
A video published by The Bangor Daily News shows that immigration agents handcuffed Mr. Guerrero while he was lying on the ground. He does not appear to move, and it is unclear if he was alive at the time.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the circumstances around the shooting. In a statement, the department said that Mr. Guerrero was an “illegal alien,” and that ICE had been surveilling the last known address of a person with a deportation order on Monday morning. But it was unclear if Mr. Guerrero was the intended target of the operation. The department said they would investigate the shooting.
Mr. Guerrero’s killing was the second fatal ICE shooting in a week; on July 7, ICE agents shot and killed a man named Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston during a traffic stop. On Tuesday, the Trump administration ordered ICE to halt most vehicle stops while carrying out its operations across the country, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Ainara Tiefenthäler and Dmitriy Khavin contributed video editing.