Gov. Maura Healey said Tuesday she was “sick to her stomach” about a federal immigration agent shooting and killing a person in Maine the day before, and called for an investigation.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot a man in a vehicle Monday in Biddeford, Maine, according to the Department of Homeland Security. It was the second fatal shooting in a week involving an ICE agent firing into a vehicle.
The department said agents were conducting surveillance of the last known address of an individual who had been ordered to leave the country. ICE tried to conduct a vehicle stop, DHS said, and the 26-year-old Colombian man attempted to flee, when an agent shot and killed him.
Questions remain about whether the man who was shot was the intended target of the arrest warrant, and the New York Times reported that Maine Gov. Janet Mills and the city’s mayor have called for a full investigation of the killing. Healey joined her voice with theirs Tuesday, demanding an investigation and “accountability.”
“I spoke to Governor Mills yesterday and last evening,” Healey said Tuesday. “This has got to end.”
Healey’s comments on Tuesday echoed those she made after ICE agents shot and killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota earlier this year.
“I’ve said this for a long time, ICE and Trump — they need to call ICE back,” the governor said Tuesday. “What is happening is so, it’s so predictable. You’ve got people out there not trained, not wearing body cameras. They’re going after individuals, we’ve seen time and time again, they shouldn’t be going after.”
She reiterated that as the state’s former attorney general, she used to work with federal agencies including ICE, but drew a distinction between “put[ting] away bad guys” and “what is happening right now.”
“How is it that you have an individual shot dead in that manner, in front of his wife, his child, and all ICE can say is, 'Sorry, we got the wrong guy.’ That’s not good law enforcement, folks. It’s shameful, and it needs to stop,” she said.
