ICE Killing in Maine Shows Why Vets Need Vetting—And Not Just in Politics

Steve Early - Suzanne Gordon

 August 7, 2026

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Photograph Source: Portland Press Herald – Public Domain

The media spent a lot of time this summer examining whether a certain Maine oysterman and Marine veteran seeking federal employment should have been better vetted by those around him.

Even after Graham Platner abandoned his U.S. Senate bid, his friends and foes argue about whether service-related conditions—which earned him a 100 percent disability rating from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—contributed to past substance abuse, mental health problems, and aggression against intimate partners.

Now, in the same state, the spotlight has shifted to David Brouillette, a troubled Afghan war vet who might also have been better off harvesting oysters. Brouillette spent eight years in the U.S. Army and state National Guard before getting hired for not one, but two federal jobs. Thanks to an ill-advised push to recruit more ex-military personnel for law enforcement roles, without proper background checks, he got to carry a gun again.

Last month, after serving as a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) police officer, a prison guard, and then joining the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Brouillette fatally shot Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, a young Colombian immigrant, during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine.

The Vet-to-Cop Pipeline

Thanks to Congress allocating $30 billion to create 10,000 more positions for that agency between 2025 and 2030—and job cuts at other federal departments, which often employ veterans—more ex-soldiers are getting hired into a para-military workforce, with insufficient screening, minimal training, and leaders who valorize brutality. Those who have already been cops go to the head of the line for signing bonuses as high as $50,000.

Brouillette is among the 200,000 veterans disproportionately represented in the nation’s nearly one million law enforcement jobs, ranging from local police departments to the fast-growing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

For their own good and the welfare of all Americans, some of these vets should not trade one uniform for another. That’s because past military service not only produces Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); it can also leave former service members with traumatic brain injuries that trigger aggressive and impulsive behavior.

In the case of Maine mass shooter Robert Card, a longtime Army Reserve grenade range instructor who never served in combat, that condition led to the slaughter of 18 neighbors at a bar and bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, almost three years ago. Far more common is the rocky personal transition to civilian life typified by twice-divorced Brouillette, whose father and brother also served in the military.

Mental Health Issues

According to Brouillette’s first ex-wife, Ashley, he first became verbally and physically abusive after joining the military in 2007. His subsequent misbehavior, she told The New York Times, included choking her, slamming her to the floor, and pushing her against a wall. In 2012, such “threats and harassment were so persistent,” she fled the state to escape him. “He has mental health issues, he’s short-tempered, he’s reactive [and] he should be in treatment,” she says.

Seven years later, his next ex-wife sought a restraining order against Brouillette after he “broke her door down, destroyed her belongings, and dumped her clothes over a bridge,” and spat in her face. In her court filing, she expressed fear about his stalking her by “coming to my home or sitting in the parking lot of my work.” So, as CNN found, a judge twice issued temporary orders requiring Brouillette to relinquish any firearms in 2019 and 2021.

To make matters worse, when Brouillette re-trained to become a firefighter in 2021, a heavy I-beam fell on his head, inflicting serious damage. In a lawsuit over the accident, he confessed to having “impaired memory, cognitive deficits, headaches, vertigo, and high sensitivity.”

Long before he fired the shots that killed Guerrero, he had already worked among VA patients and staff in Maine, as part of an agency police force with its own troubled history of using excessive force. And then he moved on seamlessly to ICE last December, despite a checkered court record and non-military head injury that should have been disqualifying.

A Bad Career Choice

When we were researching an earlier book on veterans, two retired Army officers, both West Point grads, expressed deep concern about policing, of any kind, as a post-military career among veterans at risk for substance abuse and suicide because of PTSD, chronic pain, or traumatic brain injuries.

Daniel Sjursen, a much-decorated major who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told us that, “when you leave the service, there’s no de-programming…They just load you up on meds, and then you go straight to the police academy.” Because “military-style of policing is based on the notion that high-crime areas should be treated like occupied countries, a guy can come back to Baltimore, Camden, or Detroit and function the same way we did when occupying Kabul or Baghdad.”

As his fellow officer, a Gulf War combat vet and military historian Andrew Bacevic noted, “To the extent that we’ve got a bunch of damaged young people, then maybe the last thing we want to do is put them in a job where they carry a gun in an environment that’s going to make things worse.”

Even during Barack Obama’s administration, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was not listening to such knowledgeable insiders. Instead, the DOJ provided local police departments around the country with tens of millions of dollars to fund veterans-only positions.

As noted in a 2017 report by The Marshall Project, “When Warriors Put On the Badge,” this combination of special funding and preferential hiring mandated by state or federal law has made it harder to “build police forces that resemble and understand diverse communities.” The new hires benefiting most have been disproportionately white, because 60 percent of all enlisted men and women are not people of color.

Inappropriate Use of Force

Under the first Trump administration, the DOJ had little interest in tracking the later job performance of recently hired veterans or how their military background might affect their behavior.

By that time, however, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) had already raised concerns about “the integration of military personnel” into law enforcement. In their own 2009 hiring guide, the IACP noted that, in the case of returning combat veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan, their combat environment and their policing environments may appear surprisingly similar.”

As a result, prior military service in the Middle East “may cause returning officers to mistakenly blur the lines between military combat situations and civilian crime situations, resulting in inappropriate decisions and actions, particularly in the use of lethal force.”

Cosponsored by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, this IACP report also noted that vets who have PTSD and related “depression, anger, withdrawal, and family issues” may have “a low tolerance for civilian complaints” and greater propensity for the “inappropriate use of force.” Some police chiefs interviewed reported that veterans under their command had come back “ill prepared for the civilian world” because their PTSD left them with “exaggerated survival instincts.”

Officer-Involved Shootings

Researchers at the University of Texas School of Public Health found that Dallas Police Department officers with military experience used their guns while on duty more than non-veterans. During a 10-year period, nearly one-third of more than 500 cops involved in a shooting incident were veterans. Those who had been deployed overseas were nearly three times as likely to have fired their weapon; those who had not been deployed were still twice as likely to be involved in a shooting. This study, published in the Journal of Public Health, concluded that some veterans employed by the Dallas police department lacked “critical thinking skills” when confronted with “high stress scenarios.”

The Marshall Project reported similar findings after it studied use-of-force complaints and fatal police shootings in several cities. In Boston and Miami, officers with military experience generated more civilian complaints of excessive force. Nearly one-third of the Albuquerque officers involved in a total of thirty-five fatal shootings between January 2010 and April 2014 were veterans. One of the officers sued after killing an unarmed motorist was an Iraq War veteran whose PTSD caused flashbacks, nightmares, and blackouts. Nevertheless, as the Marshall Project discovered, he was “assigned to patrol a high-crime area of town known as ‘the War Zone.’”

“To ensure public safety and guarantee a stable, reliable, and productive workforce,” Marshall Project researchers cited the need for clear and consistent police department policies to “evaluate employees’ mental and physical fitness.  Yet local police department screening practices, around the country, remain far from standardized or effective. “Some agencies employ the use of administrative interviews and psychological evaluations to assess how veteran officers will perform the essential functions of their position, while other agencies revert to their department medical officer, or lack any policy at all.”

No Local Constraints

Whatever unhelpful contribution to militarized policing has been made by hiring too many post-9/11 vets, new and old cops in Dallas, Boston, Miami, and other cities at least walk the streets without masks on. They display badges with their names and, in most places, wear body cameras as well. If they screw up in a high-stress situation, they are subject to internal affairs investigations and/or civilian police review board questioning, particularly if an officer-involved shooting has occurred.

When an Army veteran named Derek Chauvin put George Floyd in a fatal chokehold six years ago in Minneapolis, he was even prosecuted and sentenced to a long prison term. When another military veteran named Jonathan Rose—a former machine gunner in Iraq deployed in the Twin Cities last winter as an ICE agent—fired on Renee Good, did he face any criminal charges for killing a gay non-immigrant mother of three? Not yet.

So don’t hold your breath waiting for justice for Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. For the last 18 months, federal immigration agents have operated with far less public oversight and accountability than any local police department. In the process, they have killed 23 people under circumstances that homicide detectives and local prosecutors have been blocked from properly investigating.

The Department of Homeland Security has just doubled down on its policy of not releasing the names of officers involved in these fatal encounters. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been directed to stop investigating claims by those, like David Brouillette, who say they used lethal force in response to being endangered.

Under current circumstances, no friends, family members, or employment counselors of young veterans should encourage them to answer the siren call of ICE—no matter how much they need a job. As one former ICE official told the Boston Globe, ”we should all be concerned…that they have lowered standards, that they have rushed hiring, and they have made offers to people before their vetting is complete.”

Even if applicants from military backgrounds lack the self- confessed “cognitive deficits” of Brouillette, wearing camo again—while stopping traffic, knocking down doors, brandishing automatic weapons, and engaging in car chases—is not a healthy career choice, for them or us.

White Parents Who Tell Their Kids That Race Doesn’t Matter are Ignoring the Long Shadow of Racism

James M. Thomas

August 7, 2026

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Black man drinking at a “colored” water station, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1939. Photo: Russell Lee / Adam Cuerden. Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs. Public domain.

“Look around.”

“Pay attention.”

“Be mindful of where you are and who you are with.”

“Check in. With us. With yourself.”

For parents of Black children, these four statements represent routine guidance they give, part of “the talk,” a well-worn ritual of racial socialization that shapes how Black children and adults learn what it means to live and get by in a white-dominated society.

The recent death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells has brought the importance of the talk to the forefront of public discussion. Wells, who was Black, was on a boat trip along the Mississippi Gulf Coast with a group of white friends when he disappeared on July 4. Wells’ mother reported him missing later that evening, and a park ranger found his body on July 6.

Mississippi’s history of racist violence casts a long shadow and has fueled intense online speculation about what happened to Wells. So far, investigations are ongoing and the nature and cause of Wells’ death remain undetermined.

Alongside this speculation are reminders to parents of Black children about the importance of the talk.

“There is a unique burden that comes with raising Black children,” wrote blogger Maui Bigelow. “We spend years preparing them for situations we pray they never encounter.”

Yet, for all the discussion now about the importance of “the talk” in Black families, the research I and others have done shows that there is no analagous discussion in white families about race. In fact, research finds that white parents have few, if any, direct conversations about race and racism with their children.

When white parents do talk with their children about race and racism, research finds those parents often minimize and ignore the role of racism in daily life, or discuss it in vague and superficial terms.

Making sense of white racial status

I’m a sociologist of race and racism. For the past five years I’ve been studying white people to understand how they make sense of their white racial status. My research focuses on white people living in the U.S. South because that region, more than any other, is responsible for creating and sustaining Americans’ shared ideas about race and its significance, including what it means to be white.

My team of graduate student researchers and I have interviewed well over 100 white Southerners between 18 and 88 years old, the majority of whom live in Mississippi. With a median age of 42 years old, about a third of those we spoke with were raising children of their own. Another third had children who were grown and living on their own.

In our interviews we asked these white Southerners to tell us whether and how they talked about race with their children, including what it means to be white. We also asked everyone we spoke with whether and how their own parents talked with them about race and what it means to be white.

About 30% of those we spoke with said they never talked about race, either with their parents or with their own children. Gail, 56, said she “never wanted to make it a thing” for her six children. And 41-year-old Michael said that he and his wife don’t talk to their kids about race because his parents did not talk with him about it when he was a child. “Race is just a descriptor,” Michael told us.

Jayne, 63, also said she never talked about race with her parents or her own children. But as we talked more, it became apparent that Jayne’s parents did talk with her about race.

Jayne recalled her mother being “scared of Black men” because of a lynching that took place in her hometown when her mom was a child. “She heard stories about what this Black man had supposedly done,” Jayne told us. “It left her with that fear.” Jayne knows this story because her mother told it to her, putting the same fear in Jayne that was put into her.

Race-neutral language obscures reality

Jayne’s recollection of what her mother taught her was similar to the explicit racism received and taught by about 10% of those we spoke with.

Seventy-one-year-old Shirley didn’t remember her own parents talking with her about race. When it came to her own children, though, Shirley taught them “to always be polite and treat people well.” But when it comes to marriage and family, she told them to “stay with your own.”

Antonio, 87, raised three children. He taught them that “they don’t need to go anywhere or do anything with Black kids, just to stay with the whites.”

The largest share of those we spoke with – about 44% – recalled conversations with their parents or their own children where racism was minimized in favor of language that encouraged seeing people as “just people,” and not as members of racial groups.

Lyle, 68, taught his children that “we’re all God’s children, there’s nothing special about us.” Fifty-year-old Leanna teaches her children that everyone is created “equal in dignity” and that race doesn’t matter. And 45-year-old Ned tells his children, “We’re all humans. And just because I come from a different place, or have a different skin tone … we’re all different in some way. You’re unique.”

On the surface, this race-neutral language appears nonjudgmental and even ideal. Yet Americans live in a social world in which racism remains powerfully stitched to the daily fabric of their lives, structuring where people live, the schools they attend, the places they work and the people with whom they interact.

In this context, I and others argue that race-neutral language obscures the reality of racism and works directly against efforts to meaningfully address concrete racial inequalities.

Functionally speaking, race-neutral lessons have the same effect as the more explicit racism taught by a smaller share of white parents to their children.

When white parents tell their children that race does not matter, they are implying that racism does not exist. And so their children may fail to understand how their own life chances are shaped by the same racist forces that limit opportunities for others who are not white. Importantly, they may fail to understand the role they can play in challenging racism within their own lives.

The talk for white children

Would things have been different if Wells’ friends were well versed in Mississippi’s history of racial violence, including violent backlash toward integration? Or if they had considered the concerns many Black parents have of their children navigating all-white spaces? We don’t know the answer, or whether their parents did talk to them about this history.

To be clear, this is not to claim that Wells’ death was the result of racial violence, but rather to acknowledge that the minute Wells stepped onto a boat as the only Black person in his group of friends, the underlying racial context was established. Based on my research and the research of others, that context was also likely misunderstood or not understood at all by his white friends.

Having “the talk” with white children entails talking plainly with them about what it means to be white. This includes explaining to them why they grow up in mostly white neighborhoods, attend mostly white schools and have few nonwhite friends.

Having this kind of plain talk with white children can better equip those children to recognize white-dominated spaces, the challenges Black children face while navigating them, and what white children and adults can do to help.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

James M. Thomas is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi.