07.14.26
ICE-cold efficiency
Today we learned that the 26-year-old Colombian man gunned down by ICE in Biddeford, Maine on Monday was Joan Sebastian Guerrero. He lived with his partner and their three-year-old daughter. He had a work permit and had been issued a Social Security card; he was on his way to work when he was killed.
Guerrero was the second immigrant murdered by ICE within less than a week. The other victim was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, shot in Houston last week. He had lived in the US for 35 years without documentation. He had a wife, three kids and a business, where he employed numerous other Mexican nationals.
Salgado Araujo and Guerrero are the 10th and 11th people — citizens, documented and undocumented immigrants — whom ICE or Border Patrol agents have fatally shot during Trump’s second term so far. At a rate of 11 per 18-month period, ICE under this administration could end up killing 78 people. Or who knows, maybe more. These two deaths are in addition to the 21 detainees who have died in ICE custody during Trump’s second term.
In both of the recent shootings ICE said the victims were attempting to “weaponize” their vehicles, and that the agents shot out of concern for their own or the public’s safety. This is the same story, repeatedly disproved, that ICE always tells.
A former ICE acting director under Obama told CNN that immigration arrests at traffic stops carry big risks of harm to both the arrestee and the agent. That’s why people beined pursued by immigration enforcement have historically been taken into custody from jail or prison. Of course, that would require an actual criminal conviction, or at least an indictment, which at least 70 percent of ICE’s current detainees do not.
Witnesses in Biddeford dispute ICE’s account. One saw Guerrero’s vehicle apparently rammed by a Jeep, then saw him on the ground. “His face was bloody, his head was bloody,” said the witness, who watched from his window after hearing shots. “I clearly heard the victim say: ‘I tried to stop.’”
Said a neighbor who knew Guerrero: “Around 7 a.m. I heard screams. They woke me up. I heard them (officers) telling him to park the car. It was really loud. Then all of a sudden they shot like 6 times, and it was just something hard to hear.”
Video surveillance footage published by the New York Times shows that Salgado Araujo was chased aggressively by two unmarked vehicles until they caught up and boxed in his van. When the chase ended, Salgado Araujo and three passengers were dragged from the van and handcuffed behind their backs. His shirt was soaked with blood, but the agents cuffed him too.
In neither Texas nor Maine was the victim the target of the ICE operation. In neither case were the agents wearing body cams, one of the demands for minimal accountability the Democrats made back when they were holding up the federal budget vote after the ICE killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis. The Republicans approved the $70 billion appropriation without any conditions.
A couple of weeks ago, speaking to the press, deportation czar Stephen Miller praised Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin for his “tremendous focus on achieving results through incredibly efficient mechanisms.”
Short of mass extermination — which Miller would probably support — murdering immigrants is about as efficient as you can get.
Miller also noted that ICE was instituting “budgetary reforms … to make sure the resources are being used as efficiently as possible toward actual enforcement.” ICE, he said, is “stretching every dollar further.” Restitution to its victims’ survivors might cut into that $70 billion, a budgetary inefficiency but a relatively small expenditure.
Meanwhile, ICE stays on the job. After Guerrero’s murder, Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition released a statement:.
The shooting itself was not reported through MIRC’s Immigrant Defense Hotline. However, calls received in the immediate aftermath reported additional ICE activity elsewhere in the area. It is deeply disturbing that immigration enforcement activity appeared to continue even as authorities responded to a fatal incident involving the agency. At a moment when a person had just lost his life, and an investigation had barely begun, members of our community were still reporting ICE activity and fearing that others could be detained or harmed.
This is scary and tragic.