“Do we accept the idea that innocent, loving partners and loving and devoted fathers of 3-year-olds can be collateral damage to this government’s policies? Do we agree that this is just an acceptable cost of doing business?” Gideon said. “We truly believe that people need to understand what the real costs are.”

“I want to be clear about something. Johan Sebastián, before he was shot to death, had been accused of committing no crime. He was in this country lawfully, and he was following a lawful process that’s prescribed by our federal government,” the attorney said, adding that Durán had been issued a work permit and a Social Security number under the Trump administration.

ICE has said it was conducting “targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal” around 7 a.m. Monday, an agency spokesperson said.

“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon,” the ICE spokesperson said.

Durán, who was born and raised in Bucaramanga, Colombia, had come to the U.S. in 2023 to seek better opportunities for him and his family, relatives said.

A spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News in an email that Durán “illegally entered the United States” through the southern border nearly three years ago “and was released into the country under the Biden Administration.”

Entering the U.S. without proper authorization is a misdemeanor, but living in the country without legal permission is a civil violation and not a criminal offense.

At work, and everywhere he went, Durán carried an infectious joy, Rojas said.

As a father, he was devoted. Aside from working cleaning and delivery jobs to provide for his family, he took their daughter, Dulce — or “gordita” (chubby) as he lovingly called her — to the park every afternoon, Rojas said.

Durán always indulged his little girl whenever she had a craving for nuggets and fries, Rojas said, adding he would often marvel in tears every time he realized his daughter “was getting bigger.”

Rojas recalled a conversation she had with Durán a few months ago, wondering who their little girl would grow up to be. Durán said he would have a hard time sending off his daughter to school for the first time, she said.

Dulce now asks for her father every night, Rojas said, breaking down in tears. “And I don’t have the strength to tell her that dad isn’t coming, that she can’t give him a hug and tell him ‘I love you.’”

Gideon said that “there will come a time when those responsible for Johan Sebastián’s needless death will have to answer for what they did. But today is not that day. … Today is about Johan Sebastián and who he was as a person.”

Ralph Benko served as a deputy general counsel in the Reagan White House and worked closely with the George W. Bush administration as a contractor in its domestic policy initiative to find and rescue human trafficking victims. He lives in Maryland.

“As Maine goes, so goes the nation” was, for about a century, a political maxim. Recently, the political junkies in the capital were obsessing about the Platner vs. Collins race.

Wrong race!

Understandable, for those card-carrying members of the Columnist Party. The U.S. Senate majority, a very big deal, may hinge on that race. And that race was spiced up by the salacious and unseemly stories about the winner of the Democratic primary.

With that said, hey, junkies? Platner vs. Collins always was the wrong race to put on the marquee of your political theater. The real bellwether race  is the governor’s contest between Bobby Charles and Hannah Pingree.

The political dynamics that have emerged or are emerging is less Republican vs. Democrat and more establishment insiders (Hannah Pingree, former speaker of the Maine House, whose family name has been a prominent fixture in Maine politics for over 30 years) vs. popular insurgents (Bobby Charles, on his first electoral foray).

Charles is fashioning his affordability program via a classic center-right Republican free market platform. Pingree is fashioning her affordability solution via a classic center-left Democratic public works and pro-regulatory platform.

Full disclosure, as chairman of the 190,000-Facebook follower Capitalist League, I lean center-right. My own preferences revealed, there is more to this race than programmatic preferences.

The Charles vs. Pingree race is the perfect microcosm of the national political culture.

I was a lifelong Democrat until the sensible Democratic Party left me for left field. And there they go again. The progressive Mills-Pingree-Platner party ghosts the FDR/JFK/Bill Clinton Democrats. 

Bobby Charles — who worked in the Reagan White House and later directly for Colin Powell —  is a modern Reaganesque figure, aligning himself with the sensible Maine population, including independents and traditional Democrats, offering common-sense policies.

Charles is running on the Republican line. Yet he has the kind of “man of the people” values that FDR embodied and Middle America embodies. 

Yes, there is a lot of crazy going on in the GOP now. Charles, however, embodies classical Republican radical pragmatism. He’s not an ideologue, and is exempt from the fanaticism that so plagues our politics today. Charles is neither a zealot nor a moderate. He’s simply … capable.

Meanwhile the Democrats now, wholesale, are nominating “democratic socialists.” Wait, what? History has repeatedly shown that socialism doesn’t work, locally or nationally. 

The further left you move, the more it never works. Remember Jimmy Carter’s misery index? (That’s what forced me out of my once beloved Democratic Party.) 

Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes. Let’s do sane for a change.

Hannah Pingree presents as an honorable and capable public servant. That said, she will, if elected, be badly constrained by the romantic-but-dysfunctional emerging narrative of her party, now in thrall to its fanatical base, listing so far to portside that it is about to capsize the ship of state.

Maine is one of the states most guided by common sense. Its voters will embrace the candidate with a proven agenda for affordability and security rather than a member of the party who is admittedly charming but impractically romantic (Bernie, AOC, Zohran, etc).

While the nation scratched its head at Maine’s oddly out of sync “oyster farmer” there was, and is, a more meaningful race afoot. Many who have known Bobby Charles for decades and watched him serve his country unflinchingly think he, considered a dark horse, is the odds-on favorite to pull an upset and bring common sense and real management skills to Maine’s governance.

So, political junkies? Now that Platner vs. Collins has ended, please turn your attention to the true marquee Maine race, Charles vs. Pingree. For as Maine goes, so goes the nation.

The day after hundreds of locals poured into the streets of Biddeford, Maine in protest of ICE’s killing of 26-year-old Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero on Monday, I drove through the former mill town. It seemed eerily still, as if in shock. When the horrors of Minneapolis and Houston come to your small corner of New England, what can you do?

In Mechanics Park in Biddeford, a small but diligent group presented one answer: you keep showing up.

“When I woke up this morning, I knew that this was the place I should go right to,” said Wayne Miller, 71, a retired pilot of 35 years and resident of Beverly, Massachusetts. “This is my backyard. This is my neighborhood.”

He paused, then started to cry. “I’m ashamed of my country. I love the country. I’m ashamed.”

Miller was standing with a sign that read “Dissent while you still can” at the corner of Mechanics Park in Biddeford, where the protest and vigil for Guerrero had been held the day before. A nearby chain-link fence served as a memorial, lined with flowers, signs, and letters of grief and apology for Guerrero and his family. One read, “3-year-olds should be watching Bluey, not their fathers being executed.” Above a “No Trespassing” sign, someone had placed another: “Biddeford was built by immigrants.”

I spoke with Miller and others who had come out on Tuesday to continue expressing their grief for their neighbor, the second person killed by federal agents in less than a week.

“It’s one thing to see a news story from a distance,” said Tessa, 28, a waitress and resident of Biddeford. “But watching it happen close to home, it really recontextualizes the safety that you feel walking around in your neighborhood.”

For Linda Henry, 27, a retired firefighter and Gloucester, Massachusetts resident, it was only a matter of time. “I know that it doesn’t matter where you live. It’s going to happen, you know. ICE is going to come.”

Guerrero was a Colombian citizen who lived in Biddeford, Maine with his partner and 3-year-old daughter. He is one of at least nine people killed by federal immigration agents since the start of Donald Trump’s second term. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claims Guerrero “weaponized” his vehicle during a traffic stop. But similar claims by DHS have quickly fallen apart after video footage of shootings has come to light.

Reports say that not only was Guerrero authorized to legally work in the US, but he wasn’t the target of ICE’s operations that day. 

Katie, a 48-year-old educator from New Hampshire, shared her anger. “A gun is not a license to kill. These agents have no business drawing their guns,” she said. “They aren’t judge, jury, and executioner, and they don’t have the right to be killing people the way that they are.”

“We were taught from the time we were little, ‘liberty and justice for all.’ We were taught that the United States was a place for everyone, and the current regime has changed that,” Katie continued.

Most of the protesters were standing with signs on the sidewalk along the adjacent intersection, shouting “ICE OUT” while passing cars honked. Near the memorial, a man on a bike caught my eye. He was off to the side, alone, quietly reading the letters addressed to Guerrero.

He introduced himself as Diego, 30, a restaurant worker and Biddeford resident. “I knew the guy. He was always around,” he said. “I was working and I was about to cry, to be honest. Because it’s injustice, you know? I’m an immigrant, and this country was built for immigrants.”

“We work, we pay taxes. We also need rights, as everybody does,” he said. “It’s not about left or right. It’s not about a political party. It’s about human rights.”

He told me that while he’s never felt disrespected by his neighbors and the people of Biddeford are good, the government is not the same. He said he feels unsafe and his community of immigrants feels like it’s hiding. 

“How many need to die for us to understand?” Diego said. “He’d got a kid, a little daughter. And that’s the most devastating. Because, you know, if I do something wrong, I can say ‘I’m sorry, I apologize.’ But he’s dead. There’s no apology that can bring him back, you know? He’s dead. I can’t even believe it, I can’t even believe this is happening.” 

When I asked Diego why he had stopped on his bike, he said out of solidarity—for Guerrero, for his partner and daughter. And when I asked what he would say to his community, he said, “Thank you for all the solidarity of people. Thank you for all the understanding. And I hope we can stop the violence.”