"It’s not a game for us here in Biddeford"
On Tuesday, Biddeford, Maine’s city council held its first meeting since ICE agent David Brouillette shot and killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastian Guerrero. The meeting started with a moment of silence for Guerrero.
“We're not here because of where Johan was born. We're not here to make a political point. We're here because Johan was a member of this community, our community,” said Biddeford Mayor Liam LaFountain. “…what we are asking for him, we would ask for any person who died in this way on the streets of Biddeford. Anyone. That’s what it means to be a community. When one of us is taken like this, we do not look away. We do not stay quiet.”
LaFountain added that while usually public comments during city council meetings are only for things that can be controlled by the city, an exception would be made for this meeting.
Residents called for a variety of actions, including ending ICE and establishing a permanent memorial (one person asked to make the memorial where Guerrero’s blood is still spilled in the street).
“Its easy enough to say city council didn’t do enough, but also I didn’t do enough. I’ve been on ICE watch committee, but ICE watch committee wasn’t there. We didn’t alert anyone the day Johan was killed,” Biddeford resident Johnathan Haynes said. “Because we don’t have enough people….we need leaders that say, like Mayor Drapeau did a hundred years ago, ‘we’re drawing a line at the bridge. We do not want these people here.’”
In September 1924, the KKK planned to march from the town of Saco, whose mayor was sympathetic to their cause, to Biddeford. Biddeford Mayor Edward Drapeau immediately told the Klan they were not welcome. The Saco River sits between the two municipalities, and Drapeau stationed reinforcements at the bridge where the Klan would have crossed.
“It’s not a game for us here in Biddeford when somebody gets killed,” Haynes added, pointing out ICE’s huge budget and the profit motive behind detentions.
If you’d like to watch the city council meeting, it’s available here.
A litany of information about David Brouillette, the officer who shot Guerrero, has surfaced, with two of his ex-wives speaking out about his history of violence (including throwing his 13 year old daughter through a glass table).
Brouillette had money problems, too. From Mother Jones:
David struggled financially. In 2020, he pleaded for a Maine court to reduce child support payments required by his second divorce. “I am NOT ABLE to survive,” David wrote in a handwritten statement. He added, “PLEASE PLEASE reduce my [child support].”
Earlier this week, the Washington Examiner ran a story detailing how unhappy longer term ICE officers are. The officers specifically mentioned the lack of training for new agents, who are now on the streets en masse:
“A supervisor with the fugitive operations unit expressed frustration at how many teams are filled with officers who haven’t even cleared background and don’t have a security clearance. It’s not safe,” said the first officer.
Guerrero is not the only person killed during ICE encounters in July. On July 7th, an ICE agent shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston at a traffic stop. Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, a Mexican tourist with a return home scheduled, was struck by a truck after running from ICE agents in Florida on July 14.
This weekend, protests against ICE will occur across the country as part of an anti-ICE National Day of Action.
Some housekeeping - I’m running a sale: for the next week, you can get 15% off annual subscriptions, which helps me continue to follow ICE around. Sometimes I travel with prior approval for reimbursement, but other times, like Maine and Delaney Hall, things happen outside of office hours, and I just go. While I’m always glad I went, financially, it can leave me completely in the hole.
For Delaney Hall, I licensed some footage, wrote a story here at the Turtle Diaries and for the Nation, and did videos for Mother Jones using my footage, including an interview and one I scripted (which I nearly got pepper sprayed during the making of).
But for Maine, my work (so far!) is only through my own channels: this post, videos on social media, and a write up of the presser held by Guerrero’s wife, Karolina Rojas Alvarez. And that’s fine, because your subscriptions make it okay for me to take risks like that!
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