A group of Scarborough residents wants U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of their town.
Organizers are circulating a petition calling on Maine’s congressional delegation to abolish ICE and review the federal lease and occupancy arrangement for a facility on Manson Libby Road that is used by the agency for immigration check-ins and has three short-term holding cells.
The group has collected more than 400 signatures since it started last week following the death of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old from Colombia who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Biddeford. It plans to continue collecting them through August.
“We just want to demonstrate that there is a groundswell that is really mad,” organizer Jennifer Jortberg said.
The U.S. General Services Administration leases the facility from owner AEY LLC, according to Josh Soley, the leasing and property manager for the building. The lease is for 15 years and began in 2019, according to Town Councilor Jon Anderson.
The GSA can choose to sublet to any agency, Soley explained.
“The only way to swap tenants would be to lobby the GSA,” Soley said. “They have total autonomy over the space.” The GSA, which serves as the landlord for federal government agencies, has not answered questions emailed Friday about the nature of the contract and whether it would be open to alternative tenants.
Anderson said he’s called members of the state’s congressional delegation and that their spokespeople told him they’d look into the group’s proposition, but weren’t sure if members of Congress have any direct power to do anything.
“They should use their voice and see what they can get done,” Anderson said.
Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and Rep. Chellie Pingree have not responded to inquiries made last week about whether they would advocate for a different tenant for that facility.
The ICE facility opened in 2021 amid public opposition.
“There was no mechanism to prevent ICE from coming to Scarborough,” Anderson said. The town’s zoning allowed for a non-municipal government facility in the industrial area when the project first came before the planning board.
Many people were concerned before it opened. Anti-ICE coalitions held protests, and residents showed up in droves to town meetings, urging leaders to block the facility. Scarborough updated its zoning ordinance in 2021 to prevent it from expanding.
There’s not much else the town can do, Town Manager Tom Hall said.
Several town councilors at a meeting Wednesday said that they are interested in passing a proclamation that condemns ICE violence and supports immigrant neighbors.
“It’s really frustrating that that’s the best we could do,” said Councilor Larry Cain.
But many residents are adamant that they want ICE out.
Indivisible Scarborough and Indivisible Team Southern Maine have hosted weekly Anti-ICE protests on Friday mornings near the processing center for months, and there are often multiple protests a week directly outside, according to organizer Rod Wendt. They’re usually early in the morning or in the afternoon, when agents come in and out of the building.
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, made an unscheduled oversight visit to the ICE field office on Friday.
“The officer who shot (Duran Guerrero) works out of this office, and it’s completely unacceptable that ICE has withheld from the public the details surrounding his murder,” Markey said in a written statement.
The day after Duran Guerrero was shot and killed, hundreds protested outside the facility, calling for an end to the violence and to push to get federal immigration enforcement out of Maine.
New Hampshire state Rep. Wendy Thomas believes that sustained, community organizing has power when it comes to immigration enforcement. She’s seen it work.
Vocal opposition shut down a plan to convert a warehouse in Merrimack, New Hampshire, into an immigration detention center that could hold as many as 600 people. The first town meeting on the issue drew more than 1,000 residents. At their second protest, they had 4,000 people, she said.
“We didn’t think we were going to get our facility killed,” Thomas said. “Our goal was to put as much sand in the gears as we could.”
The group teamed up with whistleblowers and the American Civil Liberties Union to find and publicize documents that revealed that the governor knew about the plans for the detention center before she claimed she did, putting pressure on local and national politicians.
“Politicians want to be reelected,” she said. “If their constituents link arms and are vocal in opposition, they are going to pay attention.”
Thomas has met with the Scarborough organizers a few times and told them to keep going.
“This is not a Maine problem,” she said. “This is a New England problem.”
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Dana Richie can be reached at drichie@metln.org.