Homan says ICE officer in Maine killing should not have cleared vetting

Investigation to examine how vetting process failed, Homan says

White House “border czar” Tom Homan said Sunday that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot a man in Maine this month should never have cleared the agency’s vetting process if reports of alleged domestic violence are accurate, and he acknowledged that the shooting has prompted a separate administrative probe into how the hiring system handled the officer’s background.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Homan responded to host Dana Bash’s question about whether someone with the alleged history should be an ICE agent.

“No, if those are facts, I don’t think he should ever have cleared vetting,” Homan said.

The officer, who news outlets have identified as David Brouillette, was involved in the July 13 shooting of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian man, during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has not publicly confirmed the officer’s identity.

Since the shooting, two of Brouillette’s ex-wives have described alleged abuse during their relationships with him. Lucinda Brouillette said in a statement to NPR that her ex-husband engaged in a “persistent pattern of abuse, intimidation, manipulation, fear and control.” She added: “If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of violence, my answer is unequivocally yes.”

Homan declined to comment directly on the specific case, calling it “a rare instance,” but said that if the officer had such a history, “it would have been a vetting issue, and it should have been brought to the attention of those who make those decisions.”

He said the ongoing investigation into the shooting includes determining “how did the vetting process fail.”

“When they hire somebody, they put them through a vetting process and look at all that stuff,” Homan said. “How did the vetting process fail? Was that information not available? Did they not know?”

He added: “So there’s a separate administrative investigation on what happened here. Did we have that information? Did we not have that information? But the vetting process … if that was factual, he would have an almost impossible time to pass vetting.”

The shooting has intensified scrutiny of ICE hiring practices at a time when the agency has rapidly expanded its workforce to carry out the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign. House Democrats have called for reviews of the agency’s vetting. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said that Brouillette’s alleged abusive past “directly call[s] into question the supposed vetting and training ICE does of its recruits.”

Neither the Maine shooting nor a separate fatal shooting by an ICE officer in Texas earlier this month produced body camera footage from the officers involved. Homan subsequently announced that ICE would require officers to wear body cameras during vehicle stops.

In the Texas case, which resulted in the death of Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said lab results of a white substance found in a van tested negative for narcotics, contradicting an FBI warrant application that described the substance as consistent with methamphetamine. Salgado’s family said the substance was a salt mixture used by his construction crew as electrolytes to stay hydrated in extreme heat.

Homan said Sunday that the Maine officer’s case is “all being reviewed. We will see where it lies.”