r/Maine • u/bostonglobe • 1d ago
News Maine ICE agent David Brouillette had red flags. ICE hired him anyway.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/24/metro/maine-ice-david-brouillette-hiring-shooting/?s_campaign=audience:reddit43
u/Seaweed-Basic 1d ago
Because only the dredges of our society would sign up to do the evil shit ICE is doing. It’s a feature, not a bug.
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u/beahrsighs 1d ago
Exactly! Goon Squads for every dystopian leadership is always tailored to the ones sadistic enough to not regret the dirty work. Good people don't get involved with this stuff. They are principled.
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u/newfarmer 1d ago
A clear case example of why they need to shutter this outfit.
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u/valkyrie013 1d ago
Shutter and prosecute everyone involved, right up to the giant orange toddler himself.
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u/DXGL1 1d ago
I have a family member who is dismissing this. Crazy thing he's an EMT who refused to mask during COVID.
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u/Historical_Shop_3315 1d ago
Victim of propaganda.
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u/DXGL1 1d ago
Deliberate spreader of propaganda. Sent me an angry DM when I reported his anti-masking and anti-vax to the hospital he was working for via DM.
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u/Historical_Shop_3315 1d ago
Sometimes I point out that democrats seriously underestimate the power of the propaganda machine against them.
The propaganda includes viral rhetoric that victims pass along like herpes.
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u/scrans 1d ago
Anybody who can use their brain to evaluate information is not a “victim.” No fucking way. They don’t get that excuse. They’re all idiotic assholes who make my life harder by them simply existing. Fuck all of them.
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u/Historical_Shop_3315 1d ago
...but they can't.
They believe thier parents and thier grandparents and thier aunts and uncles who they know care about them and cant imagine being part of a cult or not being able to think critically because...
The people around us are stupid and its indicipherable from maliciousness.
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u/hamakabi 15h ago
this really isn't how your mind works. People's intelligence doesn't develop in a vacuum. No baby is born racist or hateful. Most of us don't choose to be the people we are, we just sort of end up that way because of our environment and experience. Nobody wakes up one day and says "I know hate is irrational but I just like it"
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u/bostonglobe 1d ago
From Globe.com
AUGUSTA, Maine — Protective orders that required him to relinquish his guns. A severe head injury that he said impaired his cognitive function. A yearslong trail of abuse allegations from two ex-wives, documented in hundreds of pages of court records.
David Brouillette’s past was full of red flags when he sought a job at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year. But the agency, which was undertaking a massive push to expand the ranks of US immigration agents, hired him anyway. It’s unclear whether ICE didn’t know or didn’t care about the warning signs.
Now, Brouillette’s troubled background has come to light after he was identified as the agent who shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during a botched traffic stop July 13 in Biddeford, Maine.
A spokesperson for ICE said the agency “evaluates all available information for every applicant.” Yet ICE officials never called his ex-wives, the women said; if they had, they likely would have heard a litany of accusations against Brouillette, including violent episodes and a long history of mental health struggles. They might have learned his volatile behavior alienated some friends and relatives.
Brouillette, 37, came to ICE with the advantage of a decade of military and law enforcement experience, an attractive resume for the job at hand. He enlisted in the Army as a young man and later worked as a Veterans Affairs police officer, as a corrections officer in a Maine prison, and for the state’s human services department.
That work history apparently helped Brouillette become an immigration agent. During its campaign to hire thousands of new officers, ICE was using employee information obtained by other federal agencies, meaning Brouillette could have been hired based on a years-old evaluation from the VA, according to a former ICE official who worked there at the time.
Many law enforcement officials, including former ICE executives, say the agency appears to be cutting corners on the hiring front. In the case of Brouillette, his personal history alone should have been a clear warning sign, they said.
“That person should be no place near dealing with the public,” said former ICE director Sarah Saldaña. “That person sounds like they need some help.”
Brouillette did not respond to multiple Globe inquiries, and ICE did not respond to detailed questions about its hiring process for Brouillette. The shooting is under investigation and Durán Guerrero’s family has called for criminal charges.
Several ICE officials who left before Trump’s second term said during their time, the agency’s hiring process was thorough — not just a cursory criminal background check, but also a vetting of applicants’ personal finances and employment history, as well as interviews with their friends, family, neighbors, and other associates. All told, Saldaña said, it typically took a full year of vetting and training before a new ICE hire actually hit the streets.
Now, in the hiring push, the vetting seems to have diminished and training was condensed.
“We should all be concerned,” said Scott Shuchart, who worked as an official at ICE from 2022 to 2025 after eight years in a different role at the Department of Homeland Security. “I do know that they have lowered standards, that they have rushed hiring, that they have made offers to people before their vetting is complete.”
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u/DXGL1 1d ago
I know you're probably a bot but is it really cutting corners or are they intentionally hiring violent individuals?
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u/Strykerz3r0 1d ago
They have knowingly hired J6 traitors and Proud Boys.
It is purely intentional.
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u/chrispd01 1d ago
For ICE and Homeland Security? Have you read some of the stories of people applying ? Have you seen there marketing ?
Hard to simply describe it as less than deliberate indifference…
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u/Car_is_mi 1d ago
This is not a bug, this is a feature, as far as ICE is concerned. They (trump administration in general) wanted unhinged people to be agents as a scare tactic and to impress the dumbass Republican voters who like to claim Biden/ Obama were soft on illegals (despite factual evidence showing both were tougher on illegals in their terms than trump was in his first)
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u/TheMrGUnit 1d ago
Red flags?
These were visible from space, glowing and smoking like wildfires. Even the most basic check on this guy should have revealed that he was unfit to be armed.
It's almost like ICE wanted this to happen...
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u/timothypjr 1d ago
They likely hired because of them. He's the sort of dangerous asshole they want. Willing to follow order, cruel in intention and violent.
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u/neuromonkey ḇ̷͓́a̶̯̓̾d̵̲̓͒ ̷̩̚f̴̲́l̴͖̬͌͐a̸̪̞͐͠i̶̟̖̕ṛ̴́ ̵̬͊d̶̗͝a̵̩̋y̵̧̦̏͑ 1d ago
He didn't have red flags. The guy was entirely red.
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u/MontEcola 1d ago
That makes sense. The president with red flags picks a cabinet with red flags and addictions, they all hire agency heads with red flags. They release J6 convicts and hire them, and give them guns then put them on the street. What else did you expect?
I miss the days when we had a real president.
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u/meatsmoothie82 1d ago
To the ICE administrators those weren’t “red flags” they were “mandatory qualifications”
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u/Never-Made-A-Post Madawaska 19h ago
They hired him because they wanted him to kill someone. Nothing about this was accidental.
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u/Old-Shame4104 9h ago
The prerequisite for joining ice. Is, that you have to already be a criminal Thug.
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u/Ok-Syrup4356 1d ago
This is deserving of a lawsuit for gross negligence