Trump ‘border czar’ says ICE officer in Maine killing should not have cleared vetting | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s “border czar,” said Sunday that he did not believe the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer at the center of a recent deadly shooting in Maine “should have approved the review.”
Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, host Dana Bash asked Homan about the officer’s suitability for the following duties: reports owned by two of his ex-wives. accused for harassing her.
“Should someone with these issues be an ICE agent?” Bash asked.
“No, if these… are real… I don’t think they should pass scrutiny,” Homan replied.
Homan also said that as part of the ongoing investigation into the July 13 shooting incident, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero has determined “how the review process failed.”
“When they hire someone, they put them through a vetting process and look at all of these things. So based on that information, I know this is part of the ongoing investigation,” Homan said. “How… did the review process fail? Was this information not available? Did they not know?”
He added: “So there’s a separate administrative investigation into what happened here. Did we have that information? Didn’t we have that information? But the review process… if that were real, it would have an almost impossible amount of time to get through review.”
The officer involved in the killing of 25-year-old Colombian Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, has since been identified by news outlets as David Brouillette. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, has not publicly confirmed Brouillette’s identity.
Since the shooting, two of Brouillette’s ex-wives have gone public with allegations of abuse during their relationships with him. One, Lucinda Brouillette, alleged her ex-husband engaged in “a persistent pattern of abuse, intimidation, manipulation, fear and control.”
“If you ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of violence, my answer is absolutely yes,” he told NPR.
Although Homan declined to comment directly on this particular case, describing it as a “rare example”, he said: “If this person had this type of history, it would have been a matter of investigation and should have been brought to the attention of those making these decisions.”
He added in part: “We’ll see. Everything is being reviewed. We’ll see where it stands.”
The conflict led to a re-examination of ICE’s hiring practices.
Democrats have called for a review of the agency’s review process. For example, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the U.S. House homeland security committee, said Brouillette’s alleged abusive past “speaks directly to him.”[s] It calls into question the vetting and training that ICE supposedly puts into its hires.”
Body camera footage of officers has not been released in either the fatal shooting in Maine or another incident involving an ICE officer in Texas in early July. This led Homan to announce that the agency would require officers to wear body cameras during vehicle stops.
Harris district attorney Sean Teare in the Texas case that resulted in the murder of Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in question Lab results for a white substance found in a van at the center of a case tested negative for narcotics or illicit drugs, but the FBI’s application for a search warrant in which a baggie full of that substance was retained was consistent with methamphetamine, a statement said.
Salgado’s family said the substance was a mixture of salts that he and his colleagues on the construction crew used as an electrolyte to stay hydrated in extremely high temperatures.
