Pressroom

In response to reports of a fatal shooting by ICE in Biddeford, Maine, Carly Pérez Fernandez, Communications Director, issued the following statement:

“We are deeply saddened and equally enraged by the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and now, the reported death of a 26-year-old in Maine at the hands of ICE just today, both deaths occurring within a week of each other. ICE kills people and threatens community safety across the country. No one is safe when ICE is present – whether on the streets or in one of the agency’s more than 200 abuse-ridden detention facilities.

People are dying in ICE detention at a record-breaking rate, including the deaths of Adrian Andreas Florian, 85 and Felix Alcorta-Rodriguez, 63, in June, making fiscal year 2026 the deadliest fiscal year in ICE’s history. There have now been 52 deaths in ICE custody since Trump was inaugurated, 32 deaths in fiscal year 2026. ICE agents are tearing families apart and shooting people on the streets, making people less safe, and causing chaos wherever they go — whether in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Biddeford, or beyond. Make no mistake, we are witnessing a watershed moment. Trump’s mass detention expansion and deportation agenda has reached a previously unimaginable scope and scale. The human toll and cost to all Americans continues to be shocking.

We must demand members of Congress act now to zero out ICE funding in upcoming appropriations bills, revoke the billions of dollars they have already received, get ICE out of communities nationwide, and shut down ICE detention centers for good. No more abuse and death at the hands of ICE and no more ICE funding while people lose health care, struggle to pay rent and kids go hungry. We demand an end to the ICE age.”

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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.​