Outrage and empathy are palpable here, as residents want to know why Durán Guerrero was shot while driving near his apartment. Senator Angus King of Maine was told by Markwayne Mullin, the US Homeland Security secretary, that Durán Guerrero had not been the intended target of an arrest warrant and deportation order, according to King’s office.

King, an independent, said Mullin initially told him that Durán Guerrero had “weaponized” his car while agents tried to stop him about 7 a.m. Monday.

A witness to the shooting said Durán Guerrero was streaked with blood as officials dragged him out of his white sedan and onto the street.

For a hardscrabble, blue-collar city that was built by immigrants — French-Canadians, Irish, Albanian Muslims, and newer arrivals from Africa and Latin America — any sense of powerlessness is tough to stomach.

“This place was worthy, it was strong, and it was a true community during its hard times,” said state Representative Marc Malon, who represents part of Biddeford. “This used to be a depressed place, and that has changed. I haven’t even begun to reconcile how angry I am.”

Many of Biddeford’s 22,000 residents, Malon said, did not fully appreciate the fear that permeated immigrant communities in Portland and Lewiston early this year, when an ICE surge swept up more than 100 people in what the agency called Operation Catch of the Day.

Now, Durán Guerrero’s killing has brought the immigration crackdown, tragically and directly, to the streets of this coastal city, once called Trashtown USA by its detractors. Until a decade ago, more than 100 trucks rumbled down Main Street every day to deliver load after load of pungent waste to a large trash incinerator, residents said.

“That smell of garbage, you could smell it from Scarborough,” said Holly Culloton, who cofounded the Biddeford chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice.

Where once there were vacancies up and down Main Street, Culloton said, now there are small businesses that inject vitality to the once-beleaguered city, although rents are rising and gentrification is a concern.

Old mills have been converted into mixed-use developments. The University of New England is here, and industrial parks have sprouted. But Durán Guerrero’s killing, Culloton said, has scarred the community like the strike of a lightning bolt.

“To have it hit home has been really tough,” said Culloton, part of a team that responds to ICE sightings by driving to the scene, asking agents for warrants, photographing their vehicles, and seeking explanations on the spot.

“They’re creating an element of danger. This is not normal, nor do we want it to become normal,” Culloton said, adding that ICE encounters are becoming more frequent in the city.

“A friend of mine saw ICE agents surround a car at night with guns in their hands. And this is Biddeford, Maine!” Culloton said. “We’re all living on edge.”

A local advocacy group is helping raise funds for Durán Guerrero’s partner, Martha Karolina Rojas Alvarez, and their 3-year-old daughter, Dulce, so they can move from their apartment, which overlooks the street corner where Durán Guerrero was killed.

For them, Biddeford had once been a happy place — where Durán Guerrero would take Dulce to the park every afternoon.

“My daughter asks for Papá, and I don’t have the strength to tell her that Papá isn’t coming,” Rojas Alvarez said Thursday as she shared an emotional statement she had prepared with reporters. “That she can’t hug him anymore, or tell him, ‘Papi, I love you.’ ”

On Wednesday, Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat and fierce critic of the Trump administration, was heckled while visiting the shooting scene. “You ignored us!” Biddeford resident Kelsey Cummings screamed at the governor.

Cummings said later that political leaders had not done enough to curb ICE, although state and local officials, such as Malon, have limited power to influence the federal agency’s agenda. Those officials are calling for a robust investigation of the shooting.

“I don’t have much trust in the federal government right now,” Malon said. “I don’t think ‘lying’ is too strong a word to use in this circumstance.”

In a separate encounter in June, Brandy Rogers of Biddeford said she was stopped by ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle after she had volunteered to drive a neighbor, whom Rogers said is in the country legally, from district court here.

ICE agents pounded on the car’s doors and threatened to shatter its windows if Rogers did not unlock the vehicle, she said.

“I initially refused, shook my head no, but they weren’t having any of it and just kept knocking on the door,” Rogers recalled.

Eventually, Rogers unlocked the car and her neighbor, whom she did not identify, was taken into custody. She was held for three weeks before being released, Rogers said.

LaFountain, the mayor, recalled that Biddeford residents had stood against the Ku Klux Klan more than a century ago, in 1924, when Klansmen paraded in neighboring Saco and planned to cross the bridge into Biddeford.

But Biddeford’s residents, many of them Franco-Americans and Irish immigrants, banded together to block the Klan from entering their city, LaFountain said.

“In essence, they were doing something similar,” LaFountain said of the many people who have gathered in remembrance and protest after Durán Guerrero’s death. “They were standing up for immigrants in our community and across the nation.”

Since Monday, hundreds of people have come to the shooting scene at Hill and Pool streets, where a memorial has blossomed from just a few flowers to a growing array of bouquets, balloons, American flags, candles, and notes to Durán Guerrero and the community.

“We are not criminals,” one person had written in Spanish in a message left there. “We are fathers, brothers, sons, friends, workers.”

A handwritten note in English recalled seeing Durán Guerrero often when the victim worked for DoorDash. “I wish I had asked about your daughter,” the note said.

Tarlicia Aldrich brought her grandson, 8-year-old De’Marcus, who had asked to leave pictures of Bluey, a cartoon character. Durán Guerrero’s 3-year-old daughter had been seen in Bluey pajamas the morning he was killed.

“I want love in my town,” adults helped De’Marcus write on one of the drawings.

Karen Monzon, 21, said she had heard the shots that killed Durán Guerrero. “You feel the injustice. We are not here to be delinquents,” she said in Spanish.

Monzon, who is from Nicaragua and has been living in the United States for two years, works at a Mexican restaurant in Biddeford and said she often saw Durán Guerrero picking up food deliveries there. She also would see him leaving his apartment in the morning.

Monzon said that the positivity she has seen since the shooting outweighs the racism she has encountered. However, she also has noticed drivers yelling support for ICE as they pass the memorial, thrusting their middle fingers in the air.

“The majority are really good people,” Monzon said. “It’s a small group of people who don’t want us here.”

On Wednesday evening, more than 100 people gathered for a vigil at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco & Biddeford, where the pews were packed and donations collected for Durán Guerrero’s family.

Religious leaders talked about “welcoming the stranger,” immigrants, and others.

The ripple effect of Monday’s shooting is expected to linger in Biddeford, residents said, just as the memory of the town’s opposition to the Klan has for more than a century.

“We didn’t ask for this to happen,” Malon said. “We will persevere through this together, but we will carry this together for a long time.”

Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com. Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at giulia.mcdnr@globe.com. Follow her @giuliamcdnr.