ICE Knew Exactly Who They Were Arming. They Did It Anyway

The man who shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford on Monday is David Brouillette, 37 years old, an Army veteran. His agency still refuses to identify him by name. Asked about his background, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman said the agency would neither confirm nor deny attempts to expose its officers. She added that the officer had nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience, including training in the use of force. The White House referred every question back to that same agency. That statement deserves a closer look because it can be checked. Public records show Brouillette worked for less than a year at a correctional facility in Maine and less than a year for the state's Department of Health and Human Services. In 2019, he served as a police officer at the Veterans Affairs hospital near Augusta, which on Thursday referred all questions to the Department of Homeland Security. ICE hired him at the end of 2025. Add it all together and it comes to less than three years, with most of that time spent neither in federal service nor in law enforcement.

What happened in the years between is well documented. In late 2021, he wrote in a text message now contained in court records that he was broke, going to school full time, and making money delivering food. He had enrolled in firefighter training but was struck in the head by a steel beam while unloading a trailer. Court filings from the lawsuit that followed, which was later settled out of court, show he suffered a concussion and post concussion syndrome, leaving him with memory impairment, cognitive deficits, headaches, dizziness, and sensitivity to light. Our reporting also found that, according to both former and current members, he ran into conflicts with supervisors there as well. He allegedly ignored instructions on multiple occasions, and the fire department eventually let him go.

He received disability benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs, drove trucks for a living, and gave that up in January 2025 because of his health. In March 2025, he passed the real estate licensing exam, and a brokerage in Bangor announced him as a new agent in a post that was later deleted. His license remained active through December. We were able to recover that post.

That same March, the state's child support enforcement agency placed a lien against him, indicating compensation related to a permanent impairment may have been involved.

A man whose doctors documented cognitive impairment and memory problems, and who was receiving disability benefits because of them, was handed a federal badge and a gun by the United States at the end of 2025.

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His first wife, Ashley Brouillette, did not believe him when he told her what had happened. She thought he was going through another mental health episode. Only after footage from Biddeford began circulating online did she realize he had been telling the truth.

Ashley Brouillette said she tried to warn authorities about her ex-husband long before the fatal shooting. Whether those warnings were ever taken into account during ICE's hiring process remains unknown. What is clear is that, according to her, the warnings were made.

What family members describe is, in part, a medical history. A close relative, who requested to remain anonymous, describes a severe bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder, both diagnosed in childhood and confirmed by his first wife. At the age of 12, he made two suicide attempts and was hospitalized repeatedly in psychiatric facilities afterward. The relative says he cut off contact with him years ago out of fear and has received no response from him this week either.

His oldest daughter, Madison, now 18, once came home from school and found her father telling her he had been sitting on a tree stump with a gun to his head. "Someone who won't take care of himself can never protect anyone else," she said. "My father never wanted help."

Care is necessary here. People living with bipolar disorder are far more likely to become victims of violence than perpetrators, and a diagnosis does not make anyone dangerous. The accusation is not directed at an illness. It is directed at a government that knew about it and still acted the way it did from the very beginning.

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Because the Army did not want him at first either. Recruiters rejected him because of his diagnoses, then advised him to stop taking his medication for a year and apply again. He did. They accepted him. From November 2007 until January 2010, he served in the Maine National Guard. In 2009, he was a private with the 152nd Maintenance Company in Augusta. In January 2010, he transferred into the regular Army as a Human Intelligence Collector. From May 2012 until February 2013, he served in Afghanistan. He left the Army in December 2015 as a staff sergeant. Afghanistan destroyed him, the family member says. They took a man who was already seriously ill and turned him into a killing machine.

Karl Jaspers broke the question of guilt apart into different levels in 1946, and that distinction fits here. Beyond criminal guilt, which is for the courts to decide, there is political guilt, and it falls on everyone in whose name the state acts, whether they pulled the trigger or not. Whether Brouillette is guilty will be decided in court. Who handed him the gun will not. That is exactly what this story is about.

The paperwork someone should have read fills hundreds of pages. It sits at the Augusta District Court and documents years of allegations made by his second wife, who remains anonymous because she fears retaliation. Stalking. Harassment. Violence against her daughter. In several requests for temporary protection orders, she wrote that he threw his underage daughter to the floor and rubbed spaghetti into her hair. Another time, she said, he dragged the crying child through the house. "Dave needs therapy for his post traumatic stress disorder and his depression," she wrote in a 2021 filing that a judge granted. In court, Brouillette claimed his second wife was lying about him. He has no criminal record in Maine.

His first marriage began in high school. They married in 2007. Ashley filed for divorce in 2009 because, she says, he became violent the moment she got pregnant. On one occasion, she said, he threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child, an account confirmed by her mother, Avis Collins. The violence did not end after the separation. When he started working for ICE, he left Ashley a three minute voicemail mocking her for obtaining a protection order. He repeatedly called her disgusting and said the women and girls in her bloodline should die. Someone should slit their throats, he said, adding that he was not making a threat, he simply believed that was what ought to happen. After the shooting, he contacted her himself. In a call over social media, he admitted he had killed Durán Guerrero. He asked her to tell people he was a good man and not to mention the abuse she had suffered while living with him. What mattered most now, he said, was his character. He told her he was in protective custody. When she asked why he had shot the man, he replied that the shooting was justified because Durán Guerrero had tried to run him over. He told the same thing to his daughter. "I don't think he sees himself as a murderer," Madison said. "I think he truly believes he did the right thing."

In Biddeford, people are laying flowers at the intersection where Durán Guerrero was killed. In Augusta, demonstrators stood outside the federal building on Thursday. In Washington, a federal agency answered questions about this officer by talking about experience and inventing seven years that never existed. America, how far you have fallen.

To be continued ...