This story was produced as part of a partnership with NOTUS and the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
This story appears as part of a collaboration to strengthen investigative journalism in Maine between the BDN and The Maine Monitor. Read more about the partnership.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine is frustrated the Department of Homeland Security is ignoring her requests for more information on its deportation surge in her state.
Her concerns stem in large part from the recent immigration operations in Minnesota, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a woman and where protests have surged in recent weeks. Pingree worries that ICE’s Operation Catch of the Day in Maine, launched Tuesday, could be a repeat.
“We’re in the process of just writing a formal letter to say, ‘How is it you have time to talk to Fox News but you can’t explain to members of Congress exactly what’s going on?’” Pingree told NOTUS.
“We’re just very worried about it happening in our state,” Pingree said. “We’re worried about them picking up people and quickly deporting them before we’ve had a chance to find out if they’re legally in our state, or what the argument or reason was for being picked up. So I think there’s a lot of nervousness.”
The Democrat said she has been in contact with business owners who say people are not showing up to work because of the increased ICE presence, and that attendance at schools in Maine is also down.
“People are just nervous,” she said. “I hope that we don’t have the same kinds of problems that they’ve had in Minnesota, but they seem to follow a pattern.”
Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NOTUS. But ICE’s deputy assistant director, Patricia Hyde, told Fox News that the agency has arrested at least 50 people in Maine and that it has a goal of arresting around 1,400 people.
In a statement Wednesday announcing the operation, ICE described its operation as “an immigration enforcement effort across the state of Maine targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens who have terrorized communities.”
Others in the Maine delegation have also been monitoring ICE operations in the state, though U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a retiring Democrat who represents one of the most competitive House districts in the country, said he was not concerned with the lack of communication between Homeland Security, ICE and the state’s congressional delegation.
“You know, I don’t know that in my seven years here it’s been a common practice of any law-enforcement agency to tell the delegation what they’re doing in regards to active operations,” he told NOTUS.
Like Pingree, at least one other member of the delegation also saw the operation as part of a larger issue with the Trump administration.
In a statement Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Angus King criticized the administration’s “widespread defiance of constitutional norms,” including the ICE operations in Maine.
“For my part, I intend to fight back by moving to curtail the budget of ICE until such time that they respect our Constitutionally-guaranteed rights (and take off the masks), stop his dangerous and illegal international adventurism, and rein in a government which seems to be based upon whim and vengeance rather than law and common sense,” King said in the statement.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins released a statement Wednesday in which she said immigrants are an “important part” of Maine.
“There are people in Maine and elsewhere who have entered this country illegally and who have engaged in criminal activity,” Collins continued in the statement. “They could be subject to arrest and deportation pursuant to the laws of the United States, and people who are exercising the right to peacefully gather and protest their government should be careful not to interfere with law enforcement efforts while doing so.”