Rep. Donald Ardell, R-Monticello, is a retired federal special agent who served with Immigration and Naturalization Service, Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Customs Service and the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. He represents House District 6 in the Maine State Legislature.

The shooting in Biddeford has received a lot of attention in the news, online and from people who know my professional background and have questions. Many of them misunderstand the situation, how law enforcement uses of force are properly adjudicated, or how an investigation is supposed to be conducted, and why.

I spent 25 years as a federal criminal investigator. If there’s one thing that job teaches you, it’s patience. You don’t get to know exactly what happened until the work is done: until the interviews are completed, the evidence is collected and the report is written. Everybody wants an answer on day one, but investigators don’t get that luxury. The rest of us don’t either.

What we do know is this: a man is dead, and his family is grieving. That’s not in dispute, and it should not be minimized. If something went wrong, it needs to come out. If agency policy needs to change, it needs to be addressed. Nobody gets a “pass” just because they wear a badge.

What bothered me about this newspaper’s editorial on the subject (“Susan Collins and the $70 billion mistake,” July 19) wasn’t the call for accountability, it was the headlong rush to assign blame before the investigation is even finished. The paper’s argument, essentially, is that because Sen. Susan Collins voted to fund immigration enforcement, she’s responsible for what happened in Biddeford. That’s an emotional argument that just doesn’t hold up.

Congress has written immigration laws: necessary, bipartisan and non-controversial laws that have been in effect for decades. The executive branch has a constitutional duty to faithfully enforce those laws and the will of Congress. You can disagree with the policy, but the idea that enforcement of federal law is somehow illegitimate just isn’t true. It’s the law, and executive branch agencies have a duty to enforce it.

Which is why “Abolish ICE!” bothers me every time I hear it. I worked alongside agents who now serve at Homeland Security Investigations, and I have to think most people calling for this don’t know what they’re requesting, much less what the agency accomplishes day to day.

It’s not just immigration arrests. HSI special agents pursue child exploitation cases, human trafficking rings, narcotics organizations, fraud networks, gang violence and money launderers. HSI has a robust international footprint and serves on every Joint Terrorism Task Force in the country. Getting rid of the agency doesn’t answer any of the hard questions Biddeford raises. It just takes those tools away from the communities, and a country, that needs them.

The question was never whether immigration law should be enforced. That’s a settled constitutional mandate. The real question is whether it’s being enforced well. Professionally. Safely. In a way reasonable people can trust.

It’s also worth remembering where this funding conflict came from. The White House and Congress spent months trying to strike a deal on necessary border security funding. That fell apart when Democrats turned down the administration’s offer.

Then Congress still had to decide whether to give these agencies the personnel and resources to do their jobs at all. You can oppose that if you want, but saying a congressional funding vote makes a legislator responsible for every action of every employee at that executive branch agency, enforcing longstanding law no less, is a standard nobody applies anywhere else.

We could spend the next few months trading blame. Some people clearly intend to. I’d rather see this event handled the way it should be: properly investigated, assessed for any wrongdoing, the people involved held accountable if they were found to have done something wrong and agency policy or enforcement strategy adjusted to adapt, if necessary. We don’t throw away the parts of this system that are keeping people safe based on one event.

I wore that badge for a long time, and I know the dedicated people wearing it now. They deserve a rational debate based on what actually happened, not one that was decided before the facts came in.