Gov. Janet Mills is calling on Congress to cut funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement until the agency curtails its “aggressive tactics.”
She made that plea in a Friday morning statement in which Mills said such tactics are “instilling fear and anxiety” across Maine.
“The Trump administration has ramped up its ICE operations in Maine. We’ve seen ICE agents separating mothers from young children without any empathy or any respect for the rule of law,” Mills said in a statement, which specifically called out U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Mills is running for the Democratic nomination to challenge Collins in her bid for a sixth term in the U.S. Senate.
“We will not turn a blind eye as this president threatens the rights of our people here in Maine, and we will continue to stand for the rights and values that Maine people have always stood for. Let me be clear: Maine will not be intimidated, and the reckless actions that we’ve seen ICE turn to will not be tolerated here in Maine,” Mills said.
ICE agents have been highly visible in Lewiston and Greater Portland this week as the Trump administration seeks to arrest at least 1,400 immigrants. While the administration has claimed to be going after the “worst of the worst,” there have been numerous instances of immigrations without criminal records and with lawful permission to be in the country getting caught up in the sweeps, including an 18-year-old University of Southern Maine student, a civil engineer working for a Portland firm and a Cumberland County corrections officer recruit.
That’s sparked criticism from public officials such as Mills, who during a Thursday press conference called the arrest quota “pretty broad” and questioned whether the agency would find that many criminal fugitives here. She also used the press conference to raise concerns about ICE’s tactics and lack of transparency.
“You know in America, we don’t believe in secret arrests or secret police … It’s one of the foundations of our country and our Constitution,” Mills said.
It’s unclear what specifically has drawn ICE to Maine. ICE has been keeping the state’s congressional delegation in the dark.
But it comes after the Trump administration has sent scores of agents to Minneapolis in the wake of a welfare and Medicaid fraud scandal centered on Minnesota’s Somali community. Similar allegations have been leveled against a Maine immigrant health provider also involving the state’s Somali community. Most of the Somalis in Maine have acquired citizenship since first arriving in the early 2000s or were born here. Both Lewiston and Portland have large Somali populations.
So far, ICE agents have arrested at least 100 people. In response to Thursday’s criticism from Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce over their arrest of one of his recruits, ICE agents removed all detainees held at the jail in Portland.