Weekly Member Update - July 20, 2026

Written By Indivisible Albany Team

A pool of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero’s dried blood stains the intersection of Pool and Hill Streets, Biddeford, Maine, July 13, 2026 (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

At about the same time that we sent out last Monday’s Member Update to mourn the murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by ICE on the streets of Houston on July 7th, ICE was in Biddeford, Maine. According to ICE, at approximately 7:00 a.m., they were surveilling the last known residence of “an illegal alien with a final order of removal.” Only 17 minutes later, ICE fired five shots into the white Kia Rio driven by Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero while he drove himself to work with his three-year old daughter in the backseat. An ICE bullet found Joan’s face or head and, once agents had corralled the aimlessly circling vehicle with its incapacitated driver, they dragged Joan’s limp body out of the driver’s seat and onto the ground, where they handcuffed him and left him bleed out onto the street while his daughter and partner looked on in horror.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullins naturally trotted out the tired gaslighting, asserting that Durán Guerrero had “weaponized” his vehicle against agents but, with no evidence available to support that claim, DHS ultimately settled on the story that the ICE agent who shot Durán Guerrero had “feared for public safety” as Durán Guerrero tried to “flee the scene.” Suffice it to say that there is no evidence whatsoever that the 25-year-old Colombian father, who was not the target of ICE’s investigation and had authorization to work in the United States, was any kind of public safety threat when ICE shot him the head.

But we do know that the man who took Durán Guerrero’s life, ICE agent David Michael Brouillette, sure looks to be a clear and present danger to the public himself. Reporting by the Associated Press and the Portland Press Herald paints quite the picture and, according to those who knew him best, including his ex-wife, Brouillette seems to be exactly the kind of guy that ICE is looking for. Long history of mental health instability? Check. Recidivist domestic abuser? Check. Disturbing fascination with the military and law enforcement since an early age? Check. So racist that your nickname in high school was “White Boy David?” Check. Brouillette managed to enlist in the military — after he stopped taking his mental health meds upon advice from a recruiter — and, according to a relative, he deployed to “Afghanistan[, which] destroyed him — trained him to be a killing monster, a machine. They took someone who was extremely mentally ill and turned him into a killing machine.”

While there is talk that ICE’s recruitment efforts are failing to properly vet the people who ICE is sending out onto our streets armed with a mask, a gun and a sense of impunity, we don’t think that there is any problem with ICE’s vetting whatsoever. After all, if you need a bunch of goons with anger-management problems and no conscience to go out into American communities and engage in a campaign of terror and intimidation, you’re going to relying on a lot of guys like David Michael Brouillette. The problem isn’t ICE’s vetting procedures, the problem is ICE’s design, mission and objectives.

The intersection of Pool and Hill Streets, Biddeford, July 17 (Image courtesy of the Instagram account of Sen. Ed Markey [D-MA])

Citizens Caves

Last week, we linked the murderous culture of ICE to the corporate complicity of businesses like Citizens Bank, which finances the operations of ICE prison contractors CoreCivic and the GEO Group. Well, by the time we had gathered on Saturday morning outside the Guilderland branch of Citizens to honor the victims of the ICE concentration camp meat grinder, Citizens had raised the white flag. In a whiny Friday statement, Citizens announced that it would “exit the credit facilities” for GEO and CoreCivic. But, rest assured, Citizens insists, this is purely a “business decision based on changed commercial circumstances” and is most definitely not because of the “activist groups” who have unfairly failed to understand just how virtuous Citizens really is, and that poor Citizens had no choice; they had to take GEO’s and CoreCivic’s business, you see, because otherwise the Trump administration might accuse them of “debanking.” So, this definitely had nothing to do with the fact that a GEO Group employee shot and wounded a protestor Thursday night outside a Colorado detention facility. Obviously, this decision was also completely unrelated to news that the New Jersey municipalities of Montclair and Jersey City have together divested more than $330 million from Citizens’ coffers. And, Citizens cutting ties with GEO and CoreCivic is obviously not motivated by any desire to bring the sustained and well-organized demonstrations and boycotts to an end. Nope, this is a pure business decision, all about the dollars and cents.

Tell yourselves whatever you need to say in order to sleep at night, Citizens executives. But you’re never getting our money back.

Data Center Deliberations

Amid concerns that the Democratic Party isn’t quite grasping how much people really hate data centers, the big news on the data center front this week in New York was Governor Kathy Hochul’s Executive Order imposing a temporary moratorium of “up to a year” on data center development statewide. No, she didn’t just sign the expansive and ambitious Responsible Data Center Development Act, which was just sitting there waiting for her. Instead, as the Times Union reported, the Governor’s Executive Order has “fewer details” and “differs significantly” from the proposed legislation. Another clue? The law firm that represents data center expansionists isn’t raising any red flags and seems to be issuing a business-as-usual shrug about Hochul’s EO. So we’re not surprised that this is a half-measure by a Governor never willing to piss off her corporate benefactors. But what does it mean for us here in the Capital Region and the proposed Kenwood Data Center development. Well, ominously, the Kenwood developer calls the Hochul EO a “positive” development. And, when you look at EO carefully, you can understand why. The definition section of the Governor’s EO exempts a whole host of facilities from its definition of a “data center,” so the moratorium doesn’t apply to data centers that are “primarily used for manufacturing, research (including but not limited to quantum computing research or biomedical research), education . . ., or the provision of medical care.” And, wouldn’t you know it, the Kenwood facility is intended to serve, among other entities, hospitals and universities. So it seems that Governor’s EO simply will not apply to the Kenwood project; we are essentially back where we were always probably going to be, with our future in the hands of local officials. To that end, East Greenbush joined the list of localities enacting their own moratoriums this past week, and a possible moratorium is on the agenda for the Guilderland Town Board tomorrow night. So now it’s up to the City of Albany to follow suit: we’ll be providing the Albany Common Council with our draft one-year moratorium ordinance tonight.

The Ongoing Taste of Italy/Grazie Saga

When we gathered this past week outside Grazie Italian Kitchen — the Cappellos’ shuttered new restaurant location that inexplicably still has a liquor license — WNYT reporter Dan Levy focused most of his questions on the idea that, at some point, the Cappellos will surely have suffered enough. The implication was that it was incumbent upon the activist community itself to eventually decide that enough is enough and to let the poor Cappellos go back to their businesses in peace. Of course, this view ignores that the Cappellos have made no sincere attempt to atone for Alyssa Cappello’s hateful comments in the wake of Harbe Nagi’s tragic death, and that conciliatory view also demonstrates some pretty profound naiveté about who the Cappellos are and have always been. So no, enough is not enough, and we fully expect the campaign of consequences to continue indefinitely unless and until all of the Cappellos’ businesses collapse or they flee to Texas, as they often “threaten” to do. And on the subject of the longterm viability of the Cappello business model, it appears that the Cappellos’ Taste of Italy brand has become so toxic that they are trying a work-around. If you’re using Door Dash and want to check out either “Charlie’s Calzone Co.” or “On Demand Pizza,” be forewarned, both establishments are ghost kitchens being operated out of the Cappellos’ Taste of Italy location.

The Week in Flock

  • On the same night that they passed their data center moratorium, the East Greenbush Town Board heard from representatives of Flock surveillance, and we were there alongside our friends from DeFlock 518 to chime in. According to the FOIL response we received from the Town of East Greenbush back in April, East Greenbush has five cameras installed at locations throughout the Town and has been paying Flock $12.5k per year for the privilege of access to the data Flock has harvested. The contract is up for renewal at the end of this year and, if the commentary from the Town Board and residents alike is any indication, Flock is going to be expelled from East Greenbush come 2027. East Greenbush has a public forum concerning the future of Flock on the calendar for September 16; mark your calendars.

  • Add the City of Newport, Kentucky to the list of municipalities who have said Get The Flock Out. Harrisonburg, Virginia too.

  • 404 Media has reporting on how Flock’s Freeform feature allows law enforcement to search for the characteristics of individual people. Say it with us, these are not “just license plate readers.”

  • If you need a refresher on just what Flock is all about, or if you have know someone new to the movement who needs a 101, MSNow’s Jacob Soboroff had a good comprehensive feature on Sunday morning, including a report on the anti-Flock movement rising on college campuses.

Odds & Ends:

Indivisible Albany Team
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Weekly Member Update - July 13, 2026