Border Czar Admits Killer Agent Should Never Have Been Hired

A federal law enforcement agency hired a man with a documented pattern of domestic abuse to carry a gun and a badge, then watched him kill an immigrant.

"No, if those ... are facts ... I don't think he should ever have cleared vetting."

— Tom Homan, Trump administration border czar, on CNN's State of the Union, July 26, 2026

Tom Homan was not asked a difficult question. He was asked whether an agent with allegations of throwing boiling water on his wife, pointing a gun at her in the shower, and a documented history of abuse should have been hired by the agency he oversees. Homan, the most visible enforcer of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, had no answer other than to say it would have been "almost impossible" for someone with that history to pass vetting.

The man in question is David Brouillette, an ICE agent who fatally shot 25-year-old Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13. Guerrero was a Colombian national, a married father with a Social Security number. His three-year-old daughter was in the car when Brouillette pulled him over and opened fire.

Translation: Homan's own agency hired a known abuser, gave him a firearm, and sent him onto American highways.

Two of Brouillette's ex-wives have now gone public with accounts of his behavior. Ashley Brouillette, his first wife, told the Portland Press Herald that David called her after the shooting and admitted to killing Guerrero. She said he then asked her to lie for him and "cover for his character."

"He was asking me to lie for him," Ashley Brouillette said. "I told him that I was not going to lie for him. And then he tried to say that it was a justified shooting because the guy tried to hit him with his car."

Lucinda Brouillette, his second ex-wife, described what she called a "persistent pattern of abuse, intimidation, manipulation, fear and control." She said she repeatedly reported her concerns to law enforcement, the courts, and the Department of Health and Human Services. She said the warnings did not receive the attention she believed they deserved.

"If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of extreme violence, my answer is unequivocally yes," she said in a statement. "That belief is not based on speculation, but on my own lived experiences over many years."

David Brouillette served in the Maine Army National Guard and later the U.S. Army as a human intelligence collector. He was deployed to Afghanistan. Court records show he received disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The details matter because they paint a portrait of a man who was known, who was reported, and who was hired anyway.

The Maine shooting was not an isolated incident. Less than a week earlier, on July 7, ICE agents in Houston, Texas, fatally shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who was on his way to work. Video showed the agents in an unmarked van with no emergency lights activated. Salgado Araujo's family said he believed he was being robbed.

ICE originally claimed the operation was targeted immigration enforcement. It was later reported that Salgado Araujo was not the target. The white substance ICE agents found in the van and claimed was methamphetamine tested negative for narcotics or illicit drugs. Salgado Araujo's family said it was a salt mixture used by construction workers as electrolytes.

Two men. Two traffic stops. Two fatal shootings. In less than a week.

ICE suspended all traffic stops following the killings. Trump called for the suspension to be reversed the next day.

When CNN's Dana Bash pressed Homan on the status of the investigations into both shootings, he appeared to blank.

"Do you know specifically what happened to the officers involved in the Texas and Maine shootings? Have they been reassigned, placed on administrative leave? What's their status?" Bash asked.

"I don't know specifically," Homan said. "I haven't been involved with the investigations."

Bash noted that the shootings fell squarely within Homan's domain. As border czar, he oversees the enforcement of the administration's immigration operations, which have led to at least 10 deaths so far.

"No," Homan replied, passing the buck to acting ICE director David Venturella and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "You know, ICE has an acting director, Dave Venturella, and they report to Markwayne Mullin, the secretary."

More than a week after the Houston shooting, Homan admitted to CBS News that he had not seen video of the incident. The video showed agents in an unmarked vehicle with no emergency lights. When pressed, Homan offered a defensive caveat: "I'm saying they are equipped with lights and sirens. But I do not know specifically if they activated those lights."

The man responsible for the enforcement of immigration policy did not know whether the agents whose operations he oversees turned on their lights before shooting a man dead.

House Homeland Security Committee Democratic Chair Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said Brouillette's alleged abusive past "directly calls into question the supposed vetting and training ICE does of its recruits."

Thompson was not alone. Democrats across the country called for reviews of ICE's hiring practices. More than 330 communities held vigils on July 24 for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, and all the people killed by ICE this year.

The broader context is that the Trump administration has dramatically expanded ICE's enforcement operations while simultaneously paring down the agency's oversight structures. The administration eliminated compliance roles, cut staffing at the Office of Professional Responsibility, and fast-tracked recruit training timelines. The vetting system that was supposed to screen out dangerous applicants became, in practice, a rubber stamp for volume.

Homan said part of the ongoing investigation would determine "how the vetting process failed" and asked whether the information about Brouillette's past was available or simply ignored.

"If that was factual, he would have an almost impossible time to pass vetting," Homan said.

The question is not whether the vetting process should have caught Brouillette. The question is why it did not, and what else the agency missed while it was busy meeting arrest quotas.

Guerrero was named almost 12 hours after his death. In that time, the narrative was already forming: an undocumented criminal, a split-second decision, a tragic but lawful enforcement action. It took journalists and advocates to piece together that he was a married father with documentation, a Social Security number, and a child who watched her father die.

Salgado Araujo's family had to explain that the "methamphetamine" found in their van was salt and water. Brouillette's ex-wives had to go on the record to describe a history of violence that should have been in a file somewhere. Homan had to be pressed on camera before admitting that his own agency had failed its most basic responsibility.

The system that produces these outcomes does not malfunction. It works exactly as designed.