At the Voice of the Voter debate, Ashley Webb Maine joined Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate in answering a question about ICE after Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed in Biddeford this week. The exchange pushed federal immigration enforcement into a race that had just been shaped by the shooting.
Jordan Wood said, “We need a new agency that has the trust of the people.” Shenna Bellows said she had been struggling this week after Guerrero’s death, and Troy Jackson said ICE needs to be dismantled.
Guerrero and Maine Democratic U
The candidates’ answers came in the second part of the debate, where Ashley Webb Maine and the other Democrats were asked how they would reform ICE. Nirav Shah said it was time to abolish ICE and added, “How many more people need to die at the hands of Donald Trump's masked marauders before we finally agree that it's time to abolish ICE?”
Shah also said, “The rot has gone to the core; it needs to be abolished,” and laid out the changes he would require if the agency continued in any form: masks, body cameras and lifted immunity. David Costello said he would support dismantling ICE, but if he had to choose reform, he would make sure ICE agents had sufficient training.
Biddeford and the 3-year-old
Bellows said, “We know the facts: all of his neighbors said he was a good guy, [and] he was legally here,” and added that “no one deserves to be shot and killed in the streets while their 3-year-old are still in pajamas.” That detail kept the discussion focused on Guerrero, not just the agency the candidates were attacking.
Bellows also said she had been an ACLU organizer before ICE existed in 2003, using that timeline to place her criticism of the agency in a broader arc of federal immigration enforcement. The debate tied that history to the immediate aftermath of the Biddeford shooting and to the candidates’ competing answers on whether ICE should be reformed, dismantled or abolished.
Voice of the Voter debate
Elizabeth Dickerson and Dan Kleban were also part of the Democratic field in the debate, which made the ICE question part of the broader Senate race rather than a side exchange. The candidates repeatedly connected their answers to Susan Collins and to past immigration controversies in Maine, but the debate itself centered on what should happen to ICE after Guerrero’s death.
For Maine voters watching the Senate contest, the practical takeaway is that the candidates are not offering a single reform package. Some called for abolition, others for dismantling the agency, and Shah said reform would have to start with visible restraints on officers and stronger accountability.
