Democrats in Congress demand training, vetting information on ICE agent who killed immigrant in Maine

The top Democrats on two congressional panels are demanding details and records about the training and vetting of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot and killed a Colombian immigrant in Maine earlier in July, according to a letter obtained by CBS News.

California Rep. Robert Garcia and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal posed a series of questions to top officials at the Department of Homeland Security about the July 13 fatal shooting in Biddeford, Maine. Garcia and Blumenthal are the ranking members of the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, respectively. 

The killing of 25-year-old Colombian immigrant Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, which occurred less than a week after a Mexican man was fatally shot by another ICE officer in Houston, reignited a national debate over the tactics employed by the federal agents carrying out President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

The Associated Press identified the ICE officer who shot and killed Durán Guerrero as David Brouillette, citing interviews with close relatives who described the officer to the AP as a man who struggled with mental health challenges and had a long history of abusive and violent behavior. The outlet reported that Brouillette told relatives he had been hired by ICE last year.

In their letter, Garcia and Blumenthal asked officials overseeing the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers — where ICE agents are trained — if Brouillette had undergone a condensed training process that the Trump administration set up last year as it sought to add thousands of new agents to its deportation force. After backlash, ICE in June announced it would scrap the shortened curriculum and mandate additional training for those who participated in it.

The Democratic lawmakers asked if Brouillette had simply taken a four-week online course to be onboarded as an ICE officer, and whether a background check was conducted on him before he entered or graduated the training he underwent. They also demanded records related to Brouillette’s training and tests, and the investigation into the July 13 shooting.

Garcia and Blumenthal additionally requested more information about ICE’s training procedures, citing testimony earlier this year from a former ICE instructor-turned-whistleblower who described the agency’s training procedures under the Trump administration as “deficient, defective, and broken.” 

“The dangers inherent in the deployment of untrained and unqualified officers and agents to the streets demand oversight, accountability, and reform,” they said in a July 30 letter to Benjamine Huffman and Thomas Huse, the director and chief counsel of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, respectively. 

CBS News reached out to representatives for the Department of Homeland Security seeking comment on the letter sent by Garcia and Blumenthal. 

DHS has not formally disclosed the name of the officer who killed Durán Guerrero. It has said that a vehicle being driven by Durán Guerrero during the July 13 shooting “attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.” 

Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, was recently pressed on concerns about Brouillette’s past.

If the reports are accurate, Homan suggested on CNN, “I don’t think he should ever have cleared vetting.”

Both fatal shootings in Texas and Maine occurred during attempted traffic stops. The victims of both shootings were immigrants accused of being in the U.S. illegally but who DHS has admitted were not the original targets of the ICE operations that preceded their killings.

Days before Durán Guerrero was killed in Biddeford, Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years, was shot and killed by an ICE agent while driving his work van. ICE has claimed Salgado Araujo weaponized his van during a traffic stop, leading an officer to shoot in self-defense – an allegation contradicted by the other men in the vehicle.

The killings prompted ICE to institute a short-lived pause on vehicle stops, one that was scrapped after Mr. Trump intervened.