How a Troubled Past Didn't Stop an ICE Agent from Getting Hired

A man named David Brouillette was hired as an immigration agent even though his past included serious warning signs. Those warning signs included court orders that took away his guns, a bad head injury, and many accusations of abuse from two ex-wives. On July 13, Brouillette shot and killed a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during a traffic stop gone wrong. Now people are asking how he ever got the job.

Brouillette, 37, applied to work for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, last year. ICE is the federal agency in charge of enforcing immigration laws. The agency said it reviews all available information on every applicant, but his two ex-wives say no one from ICE ever called them. If ICE agents had called, the women say they would have shared a long list of serious concerns.

ICE has been trying to hire thousands of new officers very quickly. Congress gave the agency $75 billion and told it to double its workforce. By January, ICE said it had hired 12,000 new officers in a short period of time. Many former ICE leaders say that rush to hire may have caused the agency to skip important steps in checking out job applicants.

Brouillette grew up in central Maine and always wanted to work in law enforcement. He joined the Army and later served in Afghanistan. After leaving the military, he worked as a corrections officer at a Maine prison, as a police officer at a Veterans Affairs hospital, and for a state health department. That work history looked impressive on paper, and it may have helped him get hired at ICE.

But his personal life told a very different story. His first wife, Ashley Brouillette, says he was verbally and physically abusive during their marriage, which ended in 2009. She says the bad behavior continued for years after they split up. In one recorded voicemail from November 2025, Brouillette made threatening and offensive comments toward her.

His second marriage, to Lucinda Brouillette, also ended badly. The two filed nearly a dozen protective orders against each other between 2018 and their divorce in 2019. Four of those orders were filed by Lucinda and required David to give up any guns he owned. She wrote in court documents that she was tired of being yelled at and tracked down and forced to take his emotional abuse.

Brouillette also had a hard time keeping a steady job in recent years. He worked as a corrections officer for only nine months before quitting, and he lost his job as a VA police officer in 2019. By late 2021, he said he was broke and working food delivery while going to school. During a firefighter training program, a steel beam fell on his head and caused a serious injury that he said made it hard to do everyday tasks.

Former ICE leaders say the agency's old hiring process was very thorough and used to take about a full year before a new hire could start working. Agents would check applicants' finances, work history, and personal lives. They would also interview friends, family members, and neighbors. Some applicants were even rejected for having too much personal debt or for past marijuana use.

Now, experts say, those careful checks seem to have been cut short. One former ICE official said the agency was making job offers to people before their background checks were even finished. A police chief in Milford, Massachusetts, said ICE hired two of his officers and gave them a start date before anyone from ICE had called his department to check on them. He said he worried about what the agency might be missing.

Former ICE director Sarah Saldaña said Brouillette never should have been hired, and that he sounds like someone who needs help, not a badge and a gun. Former official Claire Trickler-McNulty said law enforcement agents are in a public trust position and must be held to the highest standards. The shooting of Durán Guerrero is still being investigated, and his family is calling for criminal charges. Many former officials say Congress needs to take a closer look at ICE's hiring process.