Days after an ICE agent shot and killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastian Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, his death is reverberating across the U.S. and his native Colombia, sparking tearful remembrances and fervent protests. And in Biddeford itself, his family, friends and community are grappling with the loss of a young man who worked hard to provide for his family.
On Thursday, in the basement of the Lincoln Hotel in downtown Biddeford, Martha Karolina Rojas Alvarez stood at a podium in front of a crowd of reporters gathered to hear her first public statement since the death of her partner.
"Johan Sebastian Durán Guerrero. He was a responsible man, a hard worker devoted to his family, he always dreamed big, and he had so many dreams left to fulfill. He did everything to see me happy. He always said I was his life, and that he dreamed of a whole lifetime with me. He always told me, 'until we're little old people,'" she said, through an interpreter.
Arm-in-arm with Durán Guerrero's sister, Rojas Alvarez painted a portrait of a man she described as "kind and joyful," who treated her like a queen, she said, and devoted himself to caring for their three-year-old daughter.
"From the moment he learned he would have a little princess, everything in him changed," Rojas Alvarez said. "He always said, 'that little girl will never lack for anything,' and that's how it was. From the moment he held her in his arms and held her tiny hand, he never let her go."
While Rojas Alvarez and the rest of Durán Guerrero's family are confronting his loss, the shooting has also sent shockwaves through an immigrant community where there are few degrees of separation.
"Oh, it was so — still been feeling sad," said Nancy, a resident of Biddeford who asked to only be identified by her first name, because her own citizenship application is still in process. She works in the restaurant industry, and said she knew Durán Guerrero through his work as a delivery driver. Like him, she's also from Colombia.
"When they say it's [someone] from your country, you just take that one so in your heart," Nancy said.
Biddeford has long attracted people from all over the world seeking to carve out a living.
In the 1800s and 1900s, waves of French Canadian and Irish immigrants came to work in the textile mills. According to the Maine Historical Society, Albanian textile workers founded one of the first mosques in the country here, in 1915.
Sam Smithwick, language coordinator at Biddeford Adult Education, said more recent arrivals are from the Middle East, Central Africa and Latin America. He said many are eager to advance their careers and to give back to their community.
"There are an overwhelming number of new Mainers that are changing careers and moving into healthcare," Smithwick said. "And most often when I ask them what prompted that change, their response is, 'Maine took care of me, and I want to take care of Maine.'"
Smithwick said that leads to unexpected moments of connection between immigrants new and old.
"Someone speaking about their mother or father that are in an elder care facility, and reverting back to the French language, and they have a French nurse from Haiti taking care of them," he said. "That's a special gift that you get in a city of immigrants like Biddeford."
But that sense of safety and belonging that generations of immigrants have found here has been strained for months under the weight of increased ICE activity.
At an Angolan market downtown, a shop owner named Andre is ringing up a customer who came in for five rolls of doughy cassava bread.
Andre, who asked to be identified only by his first name out of concern for his own safety, said that customer's husband was arrested by ICE just last week, and that one of the pastors at his church was detained a couple months ago.
He said some immigrants are now trying to leave, in hopes of finding safety somewhere else.
"They are trying to go and to move," he said. "Find another safe place around the country."
Andre said for his part, he has no plans to move. His family owns a house, he said, and his kids, who went through the local school system, feel at home here.
But business is down, and he said the fact that Durán Guerrero wasn't even the target of the ICE operation makes him afraid that it could happen to anyone.
As he stocked a cooler with water bottles on a steamy July afternoon, Andre said he understands that some people in this country don't like immigrants, despite the central role they've played in the country's history.
"The roots of this country start from immigrants," Andre said.
Trying to push them out, he said, is like cutting off the roots of your own tree.
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