In Response to Remarks by Vice President J.D. Vance in Maine

Asked yesterday at a political rally in Maine about the killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, Vice President J.D. Vance stated that “the Trump administration” and “our Department of Justice” is investigating the case and “they’re being dishonest if they say that we’re not investigating that case.”

The Vice President chastised “people who are far more worried about a shooting involving an illegal alien than they are about the fact that tens of thousands of Mainers died of fentanyl overdoses by that poison brought into our community.“ Have a little bit of perspective,” he said. Let me offer some perspective.

On July 13, ICE agents committed a cold-blooded killing of an innocent, unarmed twenty-five-year-old on a residential street in Biddeford, Maine. He was not the person the agents were looking for. He was the father of a three-year-old daughter, had a valid federal work permit, and was on his way to work.

Although the Vice President stated that the Federal government is investigating the shooting, to date no federal official or agency has contacted Johan Sebastián’s family, his partner, Karolina, or me as their lawyer. No federal agency has identified to the family what component is conducting the investigation, what its scope is, or who is leading it.

The Vice President’s suggestion that killing Johan Sebastián was justified or acceptable as a cost of addressing the illicit fentanyl trade is completely disingenuous and purposefully misleading.  (It is also demonstrably false. Maine recorded 390 fatal drug overdoses from all drugs combined in 2025. And even if the Vice President meant “tens of thousands” cumulatively, Maine’s own published annual data show approximately 7,600 drug-induced deaths from all drugs combined from 1997 through 2025. Fentanyl deaths are necessarily only a fraction of that total.)

Nobody—not DHS or ICE—has suggested that Johan Sebastián or anyone else who was the target of the operations that day had any connection to the drug trade. As Vice President Vance surely knows, the surge in interior immigration actions, like the one that killed Johan Sebastián, is not targeted at the drug trade. Nor can the Administration credibly attribute Maine’s declining overdose deaths to its immigration crackdown. Maine’s fatal overdose deaths fell nearly 16% in 2023 and another 19% in 2024, before President Trump returned to office. Maine’s own 2025 report described the 2025 decrease as the third consecutive annual decline.

While acknowledging that “I do not believe that the person who was shot was part of the underlying investigation,” the Vice President nevertheless attempted to blame the shooting victim, stating “when the officers approached the person they were trying to arrest, that person like drove away from the scene. And what at least the law enforcement officers argue is that that person posed a danger to the community.” In his answer, the Vice President identified no weapon, no violent crime committed by Johan Sebastián, and no specific threat of death or serious physical injury. He identified only that Johan Sebastián “drove away from the scene” and that officers claim he posed “a danger to the community.” Johan Sebastián was a twenty-five-year-old father on his way to work shortly after 7:00 a.m. on a Monday morning.

Vice President Vance went to law school. He knows that it is unlawful to arrest someone without probable cause, and in this case, there was no probable cause to believe that Johan Sebastian had committed any crime. Additionally, Vice President Vance knows that the federal government’s own deadly-force policy does not permit an officer to shoot a fleeing driver merely because the driver is characterized generally as “a danger to the community.” DHS expressly provides that deadly force “shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject” and permits it only where the officer reasonably believes the person poses a “significant threat of death or serious physical harm” and such force is necessary to prevent escape. DHS likewise prohibits firing at the operator of a moving vehicle unless deadly force is independently justified under that standard.

The Vice President’s public statements, mis-stating the law and constitutional standards for an arrest or use of deadly force are exceedingly dangerous and are reminiscent of his erroneous public statement earlier this year that an ICE officer who killed a woman in Minneapolis enjoyed “absolute immunity.”

The Vice President must correct the record immediately before other ICE officers or federal agents rely upon them to commit future unlawful, unconstitutional acts of violence or use of deadly force against other innocent persons.