ICE Agent in Maine Killing Identified as Officer Behind 'Throats Should Be Cut' Voicemail

The federal agent who shot dead a young father in a small Maine city has been identified as a former state law enforcement officer who, months before joining ICE, allegedly left a voicemail telling his ex-wife her throat should be cut.

David Michael Brouillette, 37, was named on Thursday as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian husband and father, as he drove away from a Biddeford address under surveillance on Monday morning.

The identification came not from the government, which has refused to name the agent, but from Brouillette's ex-wife, who says he telephoned her after the shooting and admitted to it. Her account, and a threatening voicemail she provided to reporters, have intensified questions about the vetting behind ICE's unprecedented hiring surge, as Maine's attorney general investigates a killing that has drawn candlelit memorials and congressional demands for answers.

An Identification The Government Refused To Make

Reports have first identified Brouillette on Thursday through his ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, who told both outlets he called her shortly after the shooting, sounding 'unusually calm', and asked her to lie for him and vouch for his character. He has not responded to repeated requests for comment, and an attempt to reach him at his home was unsuccessful.

Federal officials have declined to confirm or deny the name. 'We will never confirm or deny attempts to dox our law enforcement officers,' the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Thursday evening, arguing that identifying agents endangers them and their families. The stance contrasts with standard practice in Maine, where state police routinely release the names of officers involved in shootings.

It fell instead to the ex-wife's testimony and to employment records. Documents from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy show Brouillette joined the police department guarding the Togus VA Medical Centre in March 2017, after a stint of less than a year as a state corrections officer.

He obtained a real estate licence in April 2025 that went inactive by December, and he was a new ICE recruit hired this year when he fired the fatal shots.

A Voicemail That Raises Questions About Vetting

The most disturbing element of the reporting is a recording. Ashley Brouillette has provided a voicemail she says her ex-husband left in the autumn of 2025, in which a man with slurred speech disparages her repeatedly and says 'you should have your (expletive) throats cut', before adding that he was not threatening to do it himself, merely that he believed it should happen.

Other reports have noted that the man has been described with a history of violent behaviour by Brouillette. If the voicemail dates from autumn 2025 and his ICE hiring from this year, the sequence places the alleged threat months before the agency put a federal firearm in his hands, a timeline that goes to the heart of concerns raised repeatedly about the speed and standards of ICE's recruitment drive under the administration's mass-deportation push.

None of the allegations about Brouillette's conduct has been tested in any proceeding, he faces no announced charges, and the voicemail's attribution rests on his ex-wife's account. ICE has not said what, if anything, its background checks surfaced.

A Killing The Agency Says Was Driven By Public Safety Fears

The government's account of Monday morning is brief. Agents were surveilling the last known address of a person under a deportation order when Guerrero drove away from the home at about 7am, and, 'fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon', an ICE spokesperson said. Agents called emergency services, but Guerrero died at the scene at the corner of Pool and Hill streets.

Crucial questions remain unanswered, beginning with whether Guerrero was even the person ICE sought. Senator Angus King's office said he was not under a deportation order and DHS policy generally bars deadly force against a fleeing subject absent an imminent threat of death or serious injury. A former law enforcement officer told the network the operation looked like 'a good example of how to do everything wrong'.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey has opened an investigation, running parallel to any federal review. Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey wrote to ICE's Boston field office declaring themselves 'profoundly alarmed' and demanding a full, transparent and independent accounting.

The attorney general's office has declined to comment on its progress, and federal immigration officials have said little publicly about their own inquiry since the day of the shooting.

Meanwhile, a 25-year-old father is dead, the man who shot him was named by his own ex-wife rather than his government, and the agency that armed him will not say what it knew.