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A South Portland man filed a lawsuit Thursday against two federal immigration agents whom he alleges violated his constitutional rights during the January surge dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day.”
After seeing immigration agents in his neighborhood, Robert Peck followed them to observe their activities out of concern that they “would engage in an unlawful campaign of using excessive force to capture and disappear immigrants without due process” as he had seen documented elsewhere in the country, according to the lawsuit.
While following two different federal law enforcement vehicles on public roads, Peck said he saw each of them run red lights.
Peck, who was 67 at the time and retired after working for 20 years as a licensed clinical social worker with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs according, said in the lawsuit that he was following at a safe distance, always keeping at least one vehicle between himself and the immigration agents.
While following the second vehicle, he saw it pull over and he pulled to a stop behind it. The two agents, listed as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 in the lawsuit, approached his car and threatened to arrest him under a law that prohibits forcibly impeding or interfering with federal agents performing official duties, according to the lawsuit.
Peck filmed the interaction with his phone but said he feared for his safety based on numerous recent incidents in Maine in which immigration agents had smashed car windows and dragged the drivers out to detain them. He said he was also thinking of Renee Good who was fatally shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis while peacefully observing and was then labeled a “domestic terrorist” by the Trump administration.
“Because he didn’t feel free to leave, Mr. Peck felt like he was a sitting duck and did everything he could to stay calm and not inadvertently give the DHS agents any excuse to brutalize him,” the lawsuit says.
The agents ultimately let him leave, but Peck “felt intense waves of stress as if he had been in a
serious car accident. He also felt deeply humiliated and ashamed by his helplessness in response to the degrading and physically menacing treatment he received” from the federal agents, the lawsuit says.
After the encounter, he stopped observing immigration agents and continues to fear that he or his family members will be arrested. This fear triggers daily symptoms “such as nausea, shaking, an increase in blood pressure and heart rate, fast breathing (hyperventilation), sweating, trembling, muscle tension, and digestive dysfunctions,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit, filed under the Maine Civil Rights Act seeks redress for the agents’ violating Peck’s Fourth Amendment rights by unlawfully seizing him without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, and his First Amendment rights by “falsely accusing him of committing the crime … and threatening to use physical force to arrest him if they perceived him ever again to be ‘following’ DHS agents operating in public.”
