Maine
‘We are not criminals.’ In shaken Biddeford, a mix of grief, horror, and defiance – The Boston Globe
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.
Leyland Streiff is the principal officer of the Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine ballot committee and leader of the Maine Girl Dads, a coalition of fathers whose mission is to restore single-sex competitive sports and private spaces in schools.
We — the Maine Girl Dads, a nonpartisan coalition of 8,000-plus dads united by a mission to protect the sex-based rights of our daughters — believe that Graham Platner has created a significant opportunity for the Democratic Party. Will any candidate take it?
It’s an opportunity to challenge establishment thinking, to reclaim common sense and to reassure females of all ages that their personal boundaries — and their sex-based rights — actually matter (and aren’t just a talking point on the campaign trail).
This is an opportunity to listen to the dozens of women and girls who have come forward to say the current system is broken. That any policies prioritizing gender identity over biological sex are inequitable. That they are sexist, regressive and an affront to their federal civil rights (specifically Title IX, which was a civil right hard-won by women 54 years ago). Rights that the U.S. Supreme Court just affirmed 9-0 are sex-based rights as it relates to competitive sport.
This is an opportunity to believe the young girls and women who have risked everything to courageously come forward and testify on April 14 in Augusta, detailing how current school and Maine Human Rights Act policies have resulted in exposure to voyeurism, masturbation, violence and mental trauma from males in their private spaces and on their sports podiums in our public schools. This should shock and shame us all and spur our leaders into action.
This is an opportunity to restore equality, inclusivity and progressive thinking in school and in sport, as everyone has a sex. Sex is not gender, and there is no right or wrong way to be a male or female (dress, feel, present, identify however you want). Sex is big enough for everyone. It always has been, and always will be. It’s the common, innate and immutable trait that every human shares. Recognizing biological fact doesn’t mean disrespecting personal identity.
This is an opportunity to restore and rebuild the growing fragmentation of the Democratic Party, driven by a voting base that does not carry the radical views of the elected elite. A voting base that increasingly wants progress, not regress, of sex-based rights. A voting base of girls and women that simply want single-sex private spaces and sports (both in our schools and in our jails). And a rapidly growing base of fathers that are no longer willing to watch the political establishment strip away their daughters’ civil rights and dignity for campaign funding.
This is an opportunity to end the sex-based discrimination that happens every day in Maine’s schools, and even in our jails. If a female wants a female-only space or sport (or jail cell), they are owed that legally and morally. We should listen to these girls and women. Believe them. Stop gaslighting them (as so many of our “progressive” institutions like the Maine Women’s Lobby chooses to do). We should honor them. Encourage them. Respect them. Protect them. Seek their consent. Not force them to undress or compete next to a male after they’ve told us they don’t want that.
This is an opportunity to stand up for the sex-based rights of all kids and — in doing so — stand out from the other candidates who will surely continue touting the regressive idea that females are undeserving of private spaces or competitive sports free of males.
Democrat Mainers want a hero. Platner just created an opportunity. Will anyone take it?
Which candidate will step up and meet the moment? Who will believe women and girls? Who will respect their personal boundaries and protect their sex-based rights? Who will stand against the sex-based discrimination that’s currently aimed at our state’s most vulnerable population: our schoolchildren?
We’re rooting for common sense. We’re rooting for candidates of all parties to stand up for every child’s right to single-sex sports and private spaces in our public schools.
We hope they all stand with us and stand with our girls.
The Maine Trust for Local News has hired two reporters to cover key areas in central Maine.
Abigail Pritchard earned her master’s in journalism from Boston University and was formerly the editor-in-chief of American University’s student newspaper, The Eagle. Her work has appeared in various Massachusetts-based publications and she previously worked as the Statehouse correspondent for The New Bedford Light.
Pritchard covers the Waterville area and writes the weekly Kennebec Beat North newsletter.
When she’s not working, she enjoys cooking, reading and taking long drives.
Sara Coughlin earned a degree in English and government with a concentration in creative writing from Bowdoin College, where she served as an editor for the student newspaper, the Bowdoin Orient, and wrote for Bowdoin Communications.
Originally from Brunswick, she previously interned for the Portland Press Herald and the Harpswell Anchor.
Couglin covers the Augusta area and writes the weekly Kennebec Beat South newsletter.
Outside of work, you may find her doing yoga — she’s training to become a yoga teacher —or crocheting a hat.
The Maine Trust for Local News, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Local News, is the parent company of the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Portland Press Herald, and Sun Journal in Lewiston, as well as a host of weekly print and online publications.
Alex Smith, from Holden, attended Brewer High School and Hampshire College, and earned a law degree from Northeastern University and a master’s degree in public health from Tufts. He has worked for UNHCR, UN Women and the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He lives in London.
To win the progressive vote and have any chance of beating Susan Collins, Democratic candidates must speak with conviction and moral clarity about the defining human rights violations of our time: Israel’s genocide, apartheid, systemic torture, occupation and other crimes against Palestinians. Those who don’t need not apply.
I grew up on Holbrook Pond off Route 1A near Bangor. Today, I’m a lawyer and global health specialist with more than 25 years of experience. In 2024, I resigned from my senior advisor role with USAID in protest of the Biden administration’s Gaza policies.
Since then, I’ve joined a legal team investigating Israel’s crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and have continued my advocacy through research, media appearances (e.g., CNN , Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Arabic, AJ+ and TRT World ), lecturing and publishing with Cambridge University (UK), DAWN and other universities and think tanks.
I’ve traveled to the West Bank twice in the last year, investigating ongoing sexual violence and other human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank and coordinating legal research with human rights organizations, lawyers and survivors of torture.
With the rise and fall of the Platner campaign, I was encouraged to see my fellow Mainers elevating human rights in Palestine to a major concern and not a fringe issue. This concern mirrors broader national trends.
Among voters who supported Joe Biden in 2020 but did not vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, the single most important issue was ending Israel’s violence in Gaza (29% ), surpassing even inflation and the economy (24%), Medicare and Social Security (12%) and immigration (11%). Nationwide, a majority of Democrats have correctly identified that Israel is committing genocide, with 83% supporting a permanent stop to the killing and 75% opposing U.S. military aid to Israel (compared to just 18% in favor).
Taking a moral stand is clearly popular with Democratic voters, as we’ve seen in New York and Colorado, where voters treated opposition to Israeli crimes like a basic moral litmus test. The saying goes: “If you won’t stand against genocide, why would I trust you to stand up for universal healthcare?”
Condemnation of Israel’s crimes comfortably puts candidates on the right side of history and in good company with the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Save the Children, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the International Court of Justice, Nick Kristof and Israeli genocide scholars and organizations, including Omar Bartov, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel .
With voters showing such moral clarity and focus on this issue, it is striking that so few candidates have spoken clearly about it. To date, Jordan Wood , Shenna Bellows and Nirav Shah have publicly stated that they believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and have called for ending U.S. support for Israel’s military campaign.
The remaining potential Democratic nominees, including Troy Jackson, Dan Kleban, Paige Loud, David Costello and Andrea LaFlamme, have either taken more limited positions or have not publicly condemned what many international organizations, legal experts and human rights groups have described as genocide, nor have they called for ending U.S. arms transfers to Israel.
When Gov. Janet Mills was asked about the Gaza genocide, she gave an incoherent answer, deflecting to other humanitarian crises, listing Sudan, Somalia and the Rwandan genocide, which was over 30 years ago. Instead of naming specific actions to stop genocide and other crimes, she said vaguely, “There’s a lot we have to be concerned about.” She went on to lose the primary battle. That kind of wavering on an issue as serious as genocide won’t cut it.
Graham Platner, who openly opposed Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, received more than 150,000 votes, the highest total ever won by a Democratic U.S. Senate primary candidate in Maine. Those voters weren’t simply looking for another Democrat. They wanted someone willing to challenge corruption and the bipartisan abandonment of principle on important issues, including Gaza.
The last thing voters want is more invertebrates in Congress. Anyone not taking a moral stand should therefore stand aside.
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