Federal immigration agents swept through Westbrook on Wednesday morning, prompting a confrontation with a resident who said an officer drove to her home and warned her not to interfere with their operation.
“This is a warning. We know you live right here,” the agent told the woman, Liz Eisele McLellan, according to a recording of the interaction reviewed by the Bangor Daily News. McLellan had followed the agent in her car leaving an elementary school bus stop, she said in an interview.
The confrontation capped off a tense morning in Westbrook. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had a visible presence there on the second day of a targeted operation focused on Maine’s largest metropolitan areas. The presence of agents during the morning school commute seemed to alarm parents and put residents on alert.
“People should have the right to be able to peacefully observe and protest what’s going on, particularly when it’s happening on their own street,” Westbrook Mayor David Morse said. “For ICE to single someone out and try to intimidate them, I just found that outrageous.”
A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to a request for comment about McLellan’s interaction with officers on Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, confirmed today that it has ramped up activity in Maine after a week of heightened anticipation. Agents arrested 50 people on Tuesday in an operation called “Operation Catch of the Day” that they said is aimed at criminals and is targeting as many as 1,400 people.
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has began arresting immigrants in Maine this week as part of what the federal government is calling “Operation Catch of the Day.”
The administration of President Donald Trump named some of those who were arrested and noted serious criminal convictions and charges. However, an Angolan asylum seeker from Portland with no criminal record was arrested at a routine ICE check-in on Tuesday, according to a federal court filing. A Portland woman with a pending asylum claim was arrested Wednesday, the Maine Monitor reported.
McLellan, who narrowly lost a city council race in November, was one of several residents who fanned out to document officers on Wednesday along a morning route that kids take to school. She was one of several residents who blew whistles and honked car horns at an agent who was parked at an elementary school bus stop in Frenchtown, a neighborhood with historic mill housing that is home to many of the city’s immigrants.
“I saw at least one family come out of home, hear the whistles, and hurry their child back in,” said Erin Cavallaro, a member of the city’s school committee and one of a few adults who gathered at the bus stop. “I understand there is little we can do around detaining individuals. But to intimidate people at bus stops? It’s just sickening.”
On an ordinary weekday morning, around six kids usually board the bus at the corner of Myrtle and Brown street around 8 a.m. On Wednesday, the bus did not even stop to open its doors when the driver arrived and saw the commotion, Cavallaro said.
McLellan drove to the bus stop from another part of the city, where she had been watching four federal agents who had just arrested someone just across the river on Pleasant Street. When she saw people walking down the street, she told them an ICE agent was parked at the corner and to stay inside. Video from that morning shows a female agent wearing a tactical vest, sunglasses and a mask behind the wheel of an unmarked black SUV.
When the officer drove away, McLellan followed in her car, occasionally continuing to honk her horn, she said. To her surprise, the agent drove to McLellan’s house. Several other agents also arrived behind her, as did a friend of McLellan, who began filming.
The video captures the female officer walking up to her car holding a smartphone, as if to film the conversation, and telling McLellan that she is receiving a warning and they know she lived on the street. The man who took the video shared it on the conditions that it not be published and he would not be identified.
The other agents approach the man and begin silently filming him, the video shows. The rest of the agent’s conversation with McLellan is difficult to hear over the sound of car horns, a scream, and the sound of McLellan’s friend’s voice taunting the agents and telling them to leave.
About a minute later, the female agent returns to her car and says, “This is your one warning. You’re impeding an operation.” The man filming replies that he is not impeding anything.
It is not illegal to follow and record ICE agents, according to guidelines from a legal group that also caution members of the public to keep a safe distance from officers and not physically obstruct their activity.
McLellan said she suspects the officers knew her full name and where she lived because officers had taken pictures of her and her license plate earlier in the morning when she had filmed them making arrests and on patrol on Pleasant Street and the corner of Myrtle and Brown streets.
When the agents left, McLellan called 911. She told a dispatcher that she was scared and federal officers had intimidated her at her house, she said. When the dispatcher told her that she should comply with the officers, she hung up.
“I hadn’t done anything that might be construed as impeding what they were trying to do,” McLellan said. “It definitely felt like a pure intimidation tactic.”
Callie Ferguson is the deputy investigations editor for Maine Focus, the BDN’s investigations team. She can be reached at cferguson@bangordailynews.com.
Correction: A previous version of this article used an incorrect name for the Frenchtown neighborhood.