Trump Administration Declares Wrong Man Correct Target
The Trump administration celebrated ICE’s fatal shooting of the wrong immigrant in Biddeford, Maine, as a breakthrough in target-flexible enforcement, a modern system under which anyone near a suspected deportation target becomes the intended target once agents encounter him. Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian asylum-seeker with a valid work permit and no final removal order, was killed July 13 while driving his roommate’s car. Rep. Chellie Pingree said the roommate, who also reportedly had no final removal order, appeared to have been the person agents were seeking.
Department of Homeland Security officials rejected the obsolete premise that an operation must identify its target before shooting someone. The department noted that it had never conclusively said either man was the target, preserving the possibility that agents were pursuing an unidentified third person located somewhere in the continental United States. Under that interpretation, officials said, Durán Guerrero’s presence inside a vehicle demonstrated the mission’s precision because vehicles are commonly used by people to travel between places.
President Donald Trump praised ICE for refusing to be constrained by names, records or the distinction between one human being and another. “They say it was the wrong man, but he was in the car, near the house, in Maine, and ICE found somebody, which is much more accurate than finding nobody,” Trump said. “People don’t understand that kind of precision, but I understand it perfectly, and therefore it was perfect.” Administration officials said traditional law enforcement had become dangerously dependent on warrants, verified identities and knowing whom officers were looking for.
The replacement proximity standard covers roommates, borrowed cars, neighboring buildings, shared postal codes and anyone displaying alarm when approached by armed masked strangers. Pingree described the emerging facts as contradictory to ICE’s account, but DHS dismissed her criticism as nostalgia for the discredited theory that targeted surveillance should involve surveillance of a target. Officials said future operations will prevent similar misunderstandings by designating every nearby person as the intended suspect in advance. ICE therefore shot the correct man because the man it shot was, by definition, correct.
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