Two of York County’s top officials said Friday they don’t know why federal immigration enforcement agents detained one of the county’s corrections officers.
In a joint statement, County Manager Greg Zinser and Sheriff William L. King Jr. said the corrections officer was invited to an immigration appointment in Scarborough. When he arrived, he was detained by ICE and is now in custody at a facility in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Zinser and King said the county’s “rigorous” hiring process, including federal I-9 verifications, is designed to ensure that applicants can lawfully work in the state.
“To the best of our knowledge this individual has never committed any type of crime that would result in the revocation of his legal status,” the county officials said, adding that “it remains unknown if and/or when his legal status changed,” but the county was not notified of a change.
The corrections officer, who is not named in the statement, was a “contributing and valued member of the staff,” Zinser and King said, adding that the loss of any staff member taxes an already strained workforce.
Additionally, the county officials expressed concern that the ICE is reaching beyond the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s stated goal of catching the “worst of the worst” in the ICE surge into Maine that began on Tuesday under the name “Operation Catch of the Day.”
“Individuals who were previously in compliance with the law are, in our view, now being reclassified — not necessarily because of criminal behavior, but because the rules, or the interpretation thereof, changed,” Zisner and King said.
The statement from York County officials comes a day after ICE detained a Cumberland County corrections recruit in Portland, surprising Sheriff Kevin Joyce who called the arrest “bush league policing.”
The Cumberland County recruit applied for a job in late 2024 and passed background checks with a “squeaky clean” record, Joyce said.
That arrest marked the second time that a Cumberland County corrections officer has been arrested by immigration authorities since President Donald Trump returned to office last year. In June, agents detained a guard who had applied for asylum, the Portland Press Herald reported.