ICE kills man in Maine: what we know so far
An ICE officer has fatally shot a man in Maine during what authorities described as a routine removal operation, the state’s attorney general’s office confirmed on Monday afternoon. Here’s what we know so far:
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The shooting occurred as federal agents were carrying out an “enforcement operation related to a final order of removal”, the office of the Maine attorney general said.
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The man who was killed around 7.20am had reportedly “attempted to flee in a vehicle in the direction of the officer”, the agency said, prompting the use of deadly force.
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Senator Angus King said he spoke with homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin following the fatal shooting in Biddeford, Maine. King urged state and local officials to remain involved in the FBI-led investigation. He also raised concerns that ICE agents were not wearing body cameras.
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The person who was killed during the altercation involving ICE is believed to be a 26-year-old man from Colombia, according to the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coaliton and Presente! Maine. He has not been identified further.
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Witnesses described the man as being shot in the head, though ICE and DHS have not yet commented.
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Dozens of demonstrators were seen in Biddeford, Maine, where the shooting occurred, hours after the incident chanting “get ICE out” and calling out Republican senator Susan Collins for her complicit votes supporting the DHS agency.
Key events
Closing summary
That’s it for today’s politics blog. Here are the latest developments:
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A federal immigration officer shot and killed a man in Biddeford, Maine on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed, just days after a man was killed by an immigration officer during a traffic stop in Texas. In the statement, DHS claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were “conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal”. More here.
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Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, has been named as her late brother’s temporary replacement in the US Senate after his unexpected death over the weekend. Nordone would serve the remaining months on Graham’s current term. More here.
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The US has launched its third consecutive night of strikes on Iran hours after Donald Trump said Washington would reinstate a maritime blockade on the country and, in an apparently policy reversal, charge ships for safe passage. More here.
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The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced that the Pentagon and the US Department of Justice have created a “joint taskforce to identify and prosecute” what he called the “unauthorized disclosure of sensitive” information to the press, marking the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s effort to crackdown on leaks. More here.
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Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, launched a campaign to dismantle the international criminal court (ICC), claiming the global tribunal was interfering with US military and law enforcement operations at the risk of American sovereignty. More here.
Just days after Graham Platner withdrew his candidacy as the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine, Troy Jackson joined a town hall on Monday to help build morale as the new candidate for the race to unseat Susan Collins.
During a virtual town hall organized by Our Revolution, a political organization founded by Bernie Sanders, Jackson spoke alongside other candidates and lawmakers.
After speaking on the fatal shooting by ICE agents in Maine today, Jackson said: “I also want to acknowledge what everyone on this call has been through”.
“You poured your hearts, your time, and your energy into building this movement alongside another candidate in Maine, and I know that there’s real pain, anger, and disappointment, and I’m not going to try and minimize that”, Jackson said.
“But look, this movement has always been bigger than one person”, he added. “It’s about taking on a system rigged against working people, fighting for Medicare for all, strong unions, higher wages, reproductive freedom, and an economy where billionaires and corporations finally pay their fair share”.
A group of lawmakers are condemning the fatal shooting of a man by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Maine this morning.
Senator Ed Markey called the shooting “the latest attack from Trump’s masked, unaccountable thugs”.
“It’s horrific. It’s murder, and I will say it is plainly clear that we must abolish ICE now”, Markey said in a town hall on Monday.
Ilhan Omar, representative of Minnesota, also called for ICE to be abolished.
“ICE has fatally shot 11 people since Donald Trump’s second term began,” Omar said in a post on social media. “These are not isolated incidents. They are the predictable result of a cruel, violent system”.
“Abolish ICE”, Omar added.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib labeled ICE as “a rogue paramilitary organization carrying out Trump and Stephen Miller’s murderous fantasies”.
“A system designed to terrorize our families, lock our neighbors in cages, and inflict suffering on our communities can never be reformed. ABOLISH ICE”, Tlaib said on social media.
Joining lawmakers in speaking out against the agency were several hundred demonstrators who gathered in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday night to wave anti-ICE signs and call for ICE to be abolished.
The Trump administration is marking the second anniversary of the assassination attempt against the US president at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that led to tighter presidential security and sparked a wave of conspiracy theories.
On Monday, Republican representative Mike Kelly introduced a resolution to recognize the second anniversary of the attempted assassination against Trump and honor the life of Corey Comperatore, who was killed during the shooting.
“What happened in Butler that day will forever be a part of not only our local history, but our national history”, Kelly said in a statement on Monday. “It is providential that the President is leading our great nation today. Political violence has no place in America”.
On 13 July 2024, Donald Trump was wounded when a bullet grazed his ear during a rally. The gunman, a 20-year-old Pennsylvania nursing home worker named Thomas Matthew Crooks, had scaled a nearby building and opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle before a Secret Service sniper shot him dead.
Moments after the shooting, Trump raised his fist in the air and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” – an image the MAGA movement quickly adopted. The White House on Monday shared a video showing a portrait of that same image.
“Being at the hospital in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of President Trump is a day I will never forget,” White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a post on social media on Monday. “Through it all, President Trump wasn’t focused on himself. He wanted to make sure everyone else was okay. I was with two dear friends that – Dan Scavino and Steven Cheung and must admit I had a few minutes of being in shock and even a little weepy”.
Conspiracy theories took over social media soon after the shooting, with some claiming that the assassination attempt against Trump was staged, while others alleged the president faked the blood coming from his ear.
Since then, Trump has faced several more assassination attempts. Two months after the incident in Pennsylvania, another man tried to assassinate the president on his West Palm Beach golf course. In February, he was sentenced to life in prison.
More recently, Cole Tomas Allen is accused of firing a shotgun at a US Secret Service agent and trying to breach a security checkpoint armed with guns and knives at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner in April. He has pleaded not guilty to various charges, including assaulting a federal official with a deadly weapon and attempted assassination of the president.
Cate Brown
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, launched a campaign to dismantle the International criminal court (ICC) on Monday, claiming that the global tribunal was interfering with US military and law enforcement operations at the risk of American sovereignty.
Rubio invoked images of US Border Patrol agents and elected leaders being “dragged before an international court” and tried by judges from around the world in a lengthy op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Monday.
“If we stand idle, all of them will be at the mercy of foreign judges, thousands of miles away – facing the constant risk of prosecution and even imprisonment for the so-called ‘crime’ of defending their own country,” Rubio warned in a companion video posted to X.
The state department plan to “dismantle” the ICC will involve pressuring other nations to abandon the court, according to CNN. “Nations that refuse to reject the ICC’s false authority while relying on US assistance are likely to come under increased scrutiny,” an official told the outlet, adding that possible punishments could involve sanctions, travel bans and visa revocations.
DHS releases first statement after fatal Maine shooting
The department of homeland security has issued a statement regarding the fatal shooting of a man by federal immigration agents in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday.
According to DHS, ICE officers were conducting surveillance at a residence in Biddeford, Maine, looking for an undocumented individual “with a final order of removal”.
DHS said that a person left the house in a car, and officers tried to pull the vehicle over. According to the statement, the driver tried to flee, leading an officer to open fire.
“Fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon”, reads the statement.
“The driver of the vehicle was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted”, the statement continues. “He passed away from his injuries”.
The DHS’s office of inspector general was notified to investigate the firearm discharge, the agency said.
The victim is believed to be a 26-year-old man from Colombia, according to the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine.
Donald Trump approved a reduction in the size of two national monuments in Utah that are sacred among many Native Americans: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
It’s the latest move in the Trump administration’s efforts to open the land to big corporate developers and the oil and gas industry. The monuments will see a reduction of “close to a million and a half acres each”, Trump said during an executive order signing event.
“They took the land from the people quite honestly,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday. “We’re giving it back.”
This is the second time Trump has made such an approval. In 2017, during his first term, the president also shrank the designations for the national monuments, an effort that was later reversed by the Biden administration.
“We believe that under the Antiquities Act, it’s very clear that these monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area possible to protect the antiquities, and these multi-million-acre monuments that are bigger than the state of Delaware certainly do not fit that designation”, said Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, who joined Trump at the signing event on Monday.
The Antiquities Act gives presidents the power to grant legal protections to sites considered historic, archaeologically significant, or culturally important. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was established by Bill Clinton in 1996. President Barack Obama created Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 under the 1906 law.
Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, said it would take “legal action to maintain protections for these treasured landscapes”.
“President Trump’s attack on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments is just as illegal today as it was in 2017,” said Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain office, in a statement. “The Antiquities Act authorizes presidents to designate national monuments, not to destroy them”.
“Today’s proclamations are a slap to the face of public lands visitors across the country, as well as the local communities and Tribes that have worked for years to protect these special places”, McIntosh added.
Republican senator Susan Collins said that the department of homeland security office of inspector general’s Boston field office will take over the investigation of the man who was shot dead by immigration officials in Maine.
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin has informed me that the Boston office of the DHS Inspector General has taken over the investigation of the Biddeford shooting in cooperation with the FBI”, Collins said in a statement on social media.
Man fatally shot by ICE in Maine was not target of operation, senator Angus King says
Senator Angus King said that the man who was shot dead by federal agents in Maine was not the target of an immigration enforcement operation, CNN reports.
Earlier, King had said that, according to homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin, the man shot was “the target of the end of the arrest warrant based upon his immigration status”. He said the man was “in his 20s” and had been ordered removed from the United States.
But, in the latest update, Mullin now says the man was not the target of the warrant, according to King.
Senator Elizabeth Warren called the fatal shooting of a man by federal agents in Biddeford, Maine, “ beyond horrific”.
“ICE has shot and killed another person — the second death in two weeks”, Warren said in a statement on social media. “This is beyond horrific.”
“ICE is terrorizing our communities, and Republicans in Congress voted to send the rogue agency more blank checks”, Warren added. “Enough. The Senate must stop ICE’s violence”.
My colleagues Lucy Campbell and Chris Stein bring us more details about Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, who has been appointed to serve the remainder of the late Republican senator’s term:
A commissioner at the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, Graham was known as having a close relationship with her brother, who became a surrogate father to her after both of their parents died when she was 13 years old.
She had introduced the senator onstage when he announced his bid for the presidency in 2015, and he later said he thought she could have been a part in his future administration.
“If she took a role on, she would be a great representative of our country. I can’t think of a better person to represent our country in an event than my sister,” Graham told CSPAN.
Asked on CNN about the possibility of Graham taking her brother’s seat in the Senate, John Thune, the majority leader, said the idea “makes a lot of sense” and called it “a way of extending Lindsey’s legacy here, and certainly something that, if that’s what they decide end up doing, I think there’d be a lot of support for”.
Graham will serve as senator until Graham’s term ends in early January.
Republicans will hold a special primary on 11 August to choose a new Senate nominee, who will face off against Democrat Annie Andrews in the November midterms. South Carolina is a strongly Republican state, and analysts believe whoever the party nominates will be favored to win the seat.
David Smith
Greetings from the South Carolina State House in Columbia, where Governor Henry McMaster has named the late Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to temporarily replace him in the US Senate.
In an emotional five-minute press conference, where grief was written on the faces of Graham’s family and friends, McMaster described the senator as an “irresistible”, “irreplaceable” and “extraordinary” man.
Wearing dark suit, white shirt and red tie, the governor said he called Nordone early on Sunday morning and, “through tears”, she agreed to serve in her brother’s place.
McMaster, a staunch ally of Donald Trump, turned to look at Nordone as he added: “I called the president afterwards and he thought it was a great idea.” Nordone forced a smile.
In brief remarks, the 62-year-old, wearing a blue dress, pleaded with the media: “Just bear with me as I try to get through this.” She referred to “two very difficult days” since her brother’s death aged 71.
Nordone, who was raised by Graham after their parents died, said: “Lindsey has always been there for me and now I will be there for him … I think this is what Lindsey would have wanted, and I plan to honor him in this way.”
She was speaking against a backdrop of four US national flags and four South Carolina state flags, beneath a glass dome, a wrought-iron balcony and some coloured glass mosaics, including the state seal.
About 50 reporters and camera operators were gathered. Behind them was a statue of John C Calhoun, a former US vice-president, secretary of state and senator. The ornate state house was built in classical revival style in the late 19th century, primarily from blue granite and marble.
The group, which included Senator Tim Scott, departed without taking questions.
