Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate turned the killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford into a blunt demand for change this week, saying the ICE system tied to his death should be abolished or rebuilt from the ground up. In both parts of the Voice of the Voter debate, the candidates were pressed on immigration enforcement after Guerrero was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Biddeford.
The debate mattered because it put Ashley Webb Maine and the other candidates in front of voters just as the shooting was still raw. Jordan Wood said he did not believe ICE could be reformed and called for a new agency with public trust. Shenna Bellows said she had been struggling this week after Guerrero's death, adding that his neighbors said he was a good guy and that he was legally here.
Wood said what happened in Biddeford grew out of the fear ICE had created in the community, and he said he would not approve any DHS budget for immigration policing unless it included body cameras, accountability and the ability to prosecute members of that agency. Troy Jackson went further, saying ICE was not law enforcement at all but “a rogue agency doing things they are being told to do on high,” and he said it needed to be dismantled.
Nirav Shah made the sharpest break with the status quo, asking how many more people would have to die at the hands of Donald Trump's masked marauders before lawmakers agreed it was time to abolish ICE. He said any legislation should require masks and body cameras, and that immunity should be lifted, while also saying he had not heard anyone in Biddeford ask for more tactical gear or more street-level arrests. David Costello, by contrast, said he would support dismantling ICE but would keep the agency if reform were required, with better training, masks removed, body cameras and lost immunity.
The split leaves the race with a clear fault line: abolish ICE, dismantle it or try to rebuild it under tighter rules. Ashley Webb was listed among the Democratic candidates in the second part of the debate, but the public pressure now falls on the next round of campaigning to show whether any of them can explain how a federal agency would change after a death that already forced the issue into the center of the race.
