Susan Collins faces a political bind after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a 25-year-old Colombian national in Maine on Monday, threatening to reshape the Republican senator’s reelection campaign at a critical moment.
Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by ICE agents during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13. The incident immediately became a flashpoint in Maine’s Senate race, with Democratic candidates and activists seizing on the tragedy to challenge Collins’s record on immigration enforcement and her influence in Washington.
In response to the shooting, Collins urged Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “cease all non-urgent” ICE traffic stops pending an investigation. Mullin initially agreed to do so on Tuesday. But the next morning, President Trump posted on Truth Social that ICE should not abandon traffic stops, calling them one of its “most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.” Trump wrote, “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands,” and added, “The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch.”
The episode undercut Collins’s central argument to Maine voters: that she wields influence in Washington and can protect the state’s interests despite Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party. Ron Schmidt, a political science professor at the University of Southern Maine, said Trump’s post was “unhelpful to Collins,” noting that it undermined “the ability of someone in her position of being able to say, ‘I can wield influence and protect my constituents.'”
Collins has held her seat since 1997 and won reelection in 2020 by nearly nine percentage points even as Democrat Joe Biden carried Maine by almost the same margin. She is the only Republican senator up for reelection this year in a state that went for Kamala Harris in 2024. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority, and Democrats view flipping Maine as critical to their path to control the chamber.
The timing of the shooting dealt a blow to Collins just as she was benefiting from Democratic chaos. Her original Democratic challenger, Graham Platner, withdrew from the race last week following sexual assault allegations, which he denies, throwing the Maine Democratic Party into disarray. The party is now scrambling to select a new nominee from 13 candidates at a July 25 convention.
The Maine Democrats’ leading contenders—Troy Jackson, Shenna Bellows, and Nirav Shah—quickly pivoted to use the ICE shooting to galvanize their campaigns. All three support abolishing ICE. Shah, who held a press event outside Collins’s office in Biddeford, said Collins had claimed credit for brokering a de-escalation of ICE operations in January but that “it was nothing of the sort… it was just a shift of tactics to go from the visible to the invisible.” He added, “Here we are just a couple of months later, and a Mainer has been murdered.”
Collins’s record on immigration enforcement has long been complicated. In January, after ICE officers killed two civilians in Minnesota, Democrats pushed for new restrictions on the agency’s operations in exchange for continued funding. The resulting standoff with Republicans led to a months-long shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which ended when the GOP pushed through a $70 billion package to fund the agency for three years with no new conditions. According to the Boston Globe, Collins joined all other Republicans in voting for the legislation.
As chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Collins negotiated $20 million for body cameras for federal immigration officers and $2 million for de-escalation training in the DHS funding bill. She has argued these measures represent progress. Her campaign spokesperson, Blake Kernen, said in a statement that “it’s important we improve ICE’s performance,” and that Collins had “negotiated new protections in the DHS funding process” that became law. Kernen also noted that abolishing ICE, as Democratic candidates propose, would harm efforts to combat human trafficking and drug smuggling.
Collins raised more than $4 million between April and June, according to a filing released Wednesday, and entered July with an $11 million war chest—a massive financial advantage over any Democratic challenger. Political experts say the race remains competitive despite Collins’s resources. Jim Melcher, a political science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, said Trump’s devoted supporters view Collins as insufficiently loyal to the president, while Democrats see her as willing to buck her party only when Republicans don’t need her vote. “There’s very little question in my mind that it is” still a competitive race, he said.
Sources
- Reuters — Maine ICE shooting political impact on Collins, Trump’s Truth Social post contradicting her position, campaign fundraising figures, Senate majority context
- The Boston Globe — Collins’s role as Appropriations chair, DHS funding vote, body camera and de-escalation training funding, January ICE operations, Democratic candidates’ response and positions
- NBC News — Victim identified as Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, age 25, Colombian national, ICE shooting details
- The Washington Post — Durán Guerrero’s background as a cleaner and food delivery worker in Biddeford
