Naomi LaChance
View all posts by Naomi LaChance July 16, 2026
Demonstrators hold a protest outside of an ICE field office in Scarborough, Maine, on July 14, 2026. JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images There is a blood stain, several feet long, on the crosswalk and down the curb at the intersection of Pool Street and Hill Street in Biddeford, Maine. It is not roped off by crime scene tape. It has a red tint, but it could be mistaken for some kind of spill. Someone has written “THIS IS BLOOD” in white chalk, because why would someone in Maine know what it looks like when blood pools in the street and dries?
On the corner, three women are arranging flowers, candles, and rosaries. Across the street, in front of a pawn shop and a laundromat, protesters are gathered with signs: “ICE Out.” All around, journalists are standing in front of camera setups.
The blood belongs to Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 25-year-old immigrant from Colombia who lived on the block. On Monday, he was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a statement that the agent who killed Guerrero discharged his weapon in the name of “public safety.” It was the fifth vehicle-related killing by ICE agents in the past year and the second in the past week. ICE confirmed that Guerrero was not their intended target. Guerrero’s father, Omar Duran, said his son was in the country legally. He is survived by his wife and three-year-old daughter.
“He had a great vision for getting ahead, so many dreams to fulfill,” Duran, told Noticias Caracol, a Colombian news outlet, in Spanish. “My son is a wonderful son — I don’t know why they did that to him.”
Down the street, at a small park, a woman in a white dress chants “ICE Out” over and over again into a loudspeaker, a relentless call and response with the handful of other protesters. The flags in the park are at half mast. Cars honk their support as they drive by.
On a fence there is another memorial. “A man was lynched here yesterday,” reads one of the signs. “Maine grieves,” reads another. On the edge, almost hidden: “There will be trials.” Here, too, are dozens of flowers and candles.
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It was supposed to be very hot Tuesday, in the 90s. There is an eerie feeling in the air, though, like when a storm is about to come, but no storm has come to wash away the blood.
Maine’s congressional lawmakers wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security calling for an investigation. “The facts surrounding this tragedy remain a matter of significant local concern and necessitate a thorough, objective accounting,” Independent Senator Angus King, Republican Senator Susan Collins, and Democratic Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden wrote in the letter. “Given the gravity of the situation and the understandable anxiety within the Biddeford community, we urge you to prioritize this investigation.”
The person leading the chant in the park is Mary MacLeod, who lives in Buxton, Maine, and works in marketing. “It’s just very, very sad that we are devolving into a nation of cruelty,” she tells Rolling Stone, “and that cruelty is becoming so normal that we sort of are living with it and accepting it, and people who are cruel depend on that. They’re wearing us down, so that cruelty becomes the norm, and it can’t be, because it’s destroying the best of us, including the young man who was murdered yesterday, who came to this country to better himself, had a young family, and by all accounts, is a really lovely person. That’s what this country was built on, and now we’re destroying it literally and figuratively.”
“The city was built by French Canadians, like my grandfather,” a man in a Red Sox shirt and matching hat, Ryan, interjects. An English explorer arrived in what would come to be called Biddeford in 1616. It became a mill town that attracted French Canadian, Irish, and other European immigrants. In 1880, about half the population of Biddeford was foreign born. According to the Maine Historical Society, the first recorded mosque in America was built in Biddeford by Albanian immigrants.
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MacLeod is not affiliated with any activist groups. “I brought the bullhorn because my husband had it. I had never used it before, and I’m also not particularly outspoken when it comes to politics. If someone’s going to try to shout me down, I generally speaking just shut up and just walk in the other direction. I’m not interested in having this kind of argument with people. But in this particular case, I thought it was important to bring out the old bullhorn to get a message out loud and clear. But it does seem like these days it’s the loudest voices that are heard. So I figured, OK, so you fight fire with fire and bring a bullhorn.”
A boy sits at the corner of Pool and Hill on the stoop of the pawn shop, which appears to be closed. “I actually saw him get shot. I just turned 14 last week,” I hear him say to a protester.
I introduce myself and ask if he wants to talk. He sinks a little when I tell him I am a journalist. He does not want to talk, and I do not want to pressure a child into discussing something he witnessed that will likely change his life forever. He leaves after a little while.
One of the women arranging flowers at the memorial says her family members knew Guerrero, and she had seen him a couple of times. “He was a good guy. He worked really hard,” she says. According to The New York Times, Guerrero was a food delivery driver and a late-night cleaner at a veterinary clinic.
“It’s scary… scary being brown here,” she says of the ICE presence in Maine. She grew up in Maine and says it has not always felt this way.
Twenty minutes North in Portland, about 100 people gather in Monument Square to protest the murder. “ICE pulled the trigger,” activist Cecil Carey of the Party for Socialism and Liberation says into the microphone, “Collins gave the gun,” the crowd responds.
Collins has voted for and pushed for increased ICE funding. On June 5, she voted for the Secure America Act, which gives ICE and Customs and Border Protection $69.5 billion through 2029. The money for ICE is focused on hiring new officers and carrying out immigration enforcement operations like deportation.
“There is a straight line from Senator Collins to the lawlessness we saw yesterday,” Maine Senate candidate Nirav Shah said in a statement. “It’s clear that Susan Collins is never going to hold ICE accountable because she is the one bankrolling it. If Mainers want accountability, there is only one way to get it: retire Susan Collins, abolish this rogue agency, and fire the people who let it run wild.”
On Tuesday, Collins called for an end to “non-urgent vehicle stops” by ICE. The Trump administration obliged, but the president appeared to reverse the decision Wednesday on social media: “We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” he wrote.
