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The killing of 26-year-old Colombian immigrant Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero by ICE agents in Biddeford, Maine, has put the sparsely populated state back in the national spotlight amid the ongoing fallout from a sexual assault allegation that led insurgent Democratic nominee Graham Platner to suspend his campaign for Senate. The nomination will now be determined by Maine Democratic Party delegates in an accelerated — and more crowded — version of the race’s contentious primary. Platner had been running to unseat longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins, a supporter of Donald Trump and his administration’s intensifying immigration enforcement policies. Protesters chanting “Vote her out!” marched to Collins’s office after Durán Guerrero’s shooting was made public. Collins was the deciding vote to approve an additional $70 billion in federal funding for ICE last month. “Voters all across Maine, they don’t think there is a way to reform this agency. They think it needs to be abolished,” says Nathan Bernard, a Drop Site News correspondent in Maine.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Nathan Bernard, who is a correspondent for Drop Site News, his most recent piece headlined “In Letter, Platner Volunteer Network Warns Dems: Nominee Must Back Same Agenda to Win Our Full Support.” Why bring that in now with this tragedy today? Because, of course, what’s happening now is happening on behalf of the U.S. government, so politics really matter right now.

Nathan, if you can talk about what we know at this point? You have the information relayed by the independent Maine Senator Angus King that the 26-year-old Colombian man, Joan, had been given an — that he was not the target. Now, it was Angus King who released this, and not the federal government originally. And then you have these mass protests in the midst of the senatorial race, and who is senator certainly matters, with Senator Collins being the deciding vote on the tens of billions more dollars that went to ICE and CBP. Can you talk about what the people who are running right now are saying and doing? Are they participating in the protests?

NATHAN BERNARD: Yeah, yeah. There was a vigil in Portland where several of the candidates — Nirav Shah, Troy Jackson — both attended and gave speeches calling to abolish ICE. And —

DHS Says ICE Killed Man in Maine While He Was Trying to Flee

AMY GOODMAN: Nirav Shah is the former health official.

NATHAN........

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