The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot a Colombian man in Biddeford in July had a history of anger toward immigrants, especially Colombians, according to an investigation by the New York Times published Wednesday.
Four years before David Brouillette fatally shot 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero four times in his car on July 13, the Times said he sent an email to his sister lashing out at the Colombian man with whom she was in a longtime relationship.
Brouillette called the man entitled and ignorant, and said his “bloodline knows nothing about what it takes to earn and then CHERISH the freedom America offers.”
The target of Brouillette’s rage was a graduate student studying for a Ph.D. in education at the time and was in the U.S. legally, according to the Times.
Brouillette’s sister and others interviewed by the Times described the email as a snapshot of an attitude toward people born outside the U.S. that he didn’t hide.
The same year that Brouillette sent the email, he became a volunteer firefighter in Manchester, Maine. The fire chief at the time told the New York Times he quickly realized he’d made a mistake, calling Brouillette “a loose cannon.”
The new reporting adds to a record of documented claims of abuse and mental health struggles that family members say worsened after he returned from serving in Afghanistan in 2013, and a severe injury in which he was struck in the head by a steel beam while in a firefighter training program at Southern Maine Community College, according to the Times.
Brouillette, 38, joined ICE during a hiring spree earlier this year as the agency escalated its immigration enforcement efforts into a sprawling wave of chaotic and often violent arrests around the country, ending, in several cases, with fatal shootings of U.S. citizens and documented immigrants.
When he got the job, his ex-wife told the New York Times she recalled asking him how he kept getting jobs with guns, and that “he laughed.”
On the morning of July 13, Brouillette was part of a group of agents that ICE said was conducting targeted surveillance on someone with a final removal order.
According to ICE, Durán Guerrero “attempted to flee” during an attempted traffic stop, and “fearing for public safety” an officer shot him.
The agency has not named Brouillette as the one who pulled the trigger, but his ex-wife identified him, saying he called her shortly after the shooting and asked her to “lie for him” and to “cover for his character,” describing him as “unusually calm.”
A Hallowell official told the Portland Press Herald after the shooting in July that Brouillette had “too many red flags” to be hired by the town’s police department in 2024. His mother told the New York Times in a text message that Brouillette “is dangerous and should not have weapons,” and to “believe his victims, not him.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Mary Erin Casale, a lawyer for Durán Guerrero’s widow, Karolina Rojas Alvarez, and his estate, framed the New York Times report as the latest indictment on ICE’s loose hiring practices.
“David Brouillette is the poster child for what happens when our government chooses to recruit agents to carry out a campaign of hate against immigrants, hires those agents without adequate screening and places them on the street without basic training,” Casale said.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey have independently said they are investigating the shooting. A lawyer for the Durán Guerrero family told the New York Times that investigators recently told him that Frey plans to announce any decision in the case before his term of office ends in December.
ICE has booked more than 350,000 people this year and has roughly 65,000 detained currently, according to its own published data. ProPublica found that the agency has detained more than 500 U.S. citizens, many for filming or observing agents.
The agency claimed to be targeting the “worst of the worst,” but of the nearly 200 people detained in Maine during a January surge, only 11 had criminal convictions.
