ICE agent defended shooting of immigrant in Maine, ex-wife says

An impromptu memorial for Joan Sebastián Guerrero at the intersection where he was fatally shot Monday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Biddeford, Maine, on Tuesday, July 14, 2026. The agent told his former wife that he was the person who fatally shot Guerrero and defended his actions to her, the ex-wife said. (Christopher Capozziello/The New York Times)

By JENNA RUSSELL, POOJA SALHOTRA and JACEY FORTIN

A federal immigration agent told his former wife that he was the person who fatally shot a Colombian immigrant in Maine last week and defended his actions to her, the ex-wife said.

The woman, Ashley Brouillette, identified the agent as David Brouillette, 37, in an interview Thursday. She said that when she spoke to him Wednesday about the shooting, he said that it was justified.

He told her not to talk to anyone about him, she said, but then asked her to defend his character. “He said, ‘You need to tell them I’m a good person,’” she recalled David Brouillette saying, adding that he asked her not to tell anyone that he had abused her during their marriage. “I told him that I wouldn’t lie for him,” Ashley Brouillette, 37, said.

The Department of Homeland Security has not released the name of the shooter, and a spokesperson for the agency declined to confirm whether David Brouillette had fired the fatal shots, saying that publicizing agents’ names puts them at risk.

Ashley Brouillette said she had spoken to her ex-husband about the shooting and had also seen video and images of him at the scene. Two other people — one a relative who asked not to be identified and another a high school friend of David Brouillette’s — said they also recognized him from video footage and witness photos, but could not confirm that he was the person who fired the fatal shots.

No video shedding light on who fired the fatal shot Monday has emerged. But one video recorded just after the shooting appears to show another agent consoling Brouillette.

Brouillette was first reported as the agent who fired the shots by The Portland Press Herald.

The man who was killed, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 25, lived with his partner and 3-year-old daughter in Biddeford, Maine. He had been driving away from his home early Monday morning when agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement confronted him. Multiple gunshots rang out, leaving holes in the windshield of Durán Guerrero’s car.

Later in the week, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Durán Guerrero illegally entered the United States on Sept. 1, 2023, via the southern border. Benjamin Gideon, a lawyer representing the family, said on Thursday that Durán Guerrero had been working in the United States lawfully.

A phone number listed in court records as David Brouillette’s has been disconnected, and a message left at another got no response. He did not respond to an email seeking comment.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the ICE agents in Biddeford had been monitoring what they believed to be the residence of someone who was in the country illegally, for whom they had a removal order.

In a statement Monday, the department said an officer had opened fire, “fearing for public safety.”

When Ashely Brouillette spoke to him Wednesday about the shooting, she said, David Brouillette defended it as justified. “I asked him why he did it, and he said, ‘The guy tried to hit me,’” she said.

The statement did not name the person the agents had been seeking, but in the hours after Durán Guerrero was killed, details emerged to suggest that he was not the target of their search.

Ashely Brouillette, who dated David Brouillette throughout high school and was married to him from 2007 to 2009, said her former husband had become abusive after he joined the military in 2007. She said he had choked her, slammed her to the floor and pushed her against a wall.

David Brouillette’s threats and harassment were so persistent that she left Maine in 2012 to escape him, she said.

Still, she said, he had threatened to kill her as recently as November after she disciplined their daughter by taking away her cellphone. “I have said to people, ‘If I end up dead, it’s him,’” Ashley Brouillette said.

Another woman identified as a former wife of David Brouillette’s in court documents has also accused him of abuse. In a filing for an order of protection in December 2019, obtained by The New York Times, the woman wrote that he had broken her door down, destroyed her belongings and dumped her clothes over a bridge. The filing also said that Brouillette had spit in her face and cornered her in a room.

“I am scared of him coming to my home or sitting in the parking lot of my work until I leave,” she said in the filing.

The woman could not be reached for comment.

Ashley Brouillette said her former husband had post-traumatic stress disorder related to his military service in Afghanistan in 2012 and 2013; in court records, the other woman identified as a former wife also said he suffered from PTSD.

According to Army Public Affairs, he served from 2007 to 2015. He enlisted as a quartermaster and chemical equipment repairer and then served as a medical logistics specialist. He also served in the Maine Army National Guard from 2007 to 2010. From 2010 to 2015, he served as a human intelligence collector in the Army. He left the Army as a sergeant.

He also worked as a police officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Maine, Ashley Brouillette said.

Ashley Brouillette said that her former husband should not have been hired to work in immigration enforcement. It was not clear when he joined ICE. “He has mental health issues, he’s short-tempered, he’s reactive,” she said. “He should be in treatment.”