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Shoshana Hoose recently retired after 27 years with the Portland Public Schools. Prior to working for the Portland schools, she was a reporter for 20 years for newspapers in Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Maine.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins brought a photograph of a three-year-old girl to show the audience gathered at a Portland synagogue last July. Collins told us that she carries the photograph everywhere to remind her of the horror that the girl has survived, including the death of her father.
Just three days had passed since ICE agents surrounded, shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, an immigrant from Colombia with no criminal history who was living in Biddeford. The agents were l ooking for someone else, not Guerrero; he was shot by mistake. When his possessions were returned to his family, they found a bullet fired into the car seat used by his three-year-old daughter, Dulce.
One might expect that Collins was showing us Dulce’s picture as a reminder of the terror inflicted on Maine residents by a federal agency out of control. But no, Collins wanted to draw our attention elsewhere.
The photo that she carries in her purse shows an Israeli girl, Abigail Mor Edan, whose parents were killed in the Hamas raid on Oct. 7, 2023. Abigail was held hostage in Gaza for more than a year. Collins told us about Abigail to show her own steadfast support for the government of Israel. It was at the heart of Collins’ pitch that day to win support from the Jewish audience.
Abigail survived a horrible ordeal. But I want our U.S. senator to show at least as much care and concern for the children in her own state who are terrified by ICE. Last winter, hundreds of Maine children didn’t dare go to school for fear of getting caught up in the ICE raids underway.
Immigrants who follow every law have been arrested by the agency. The loss of income from a main breadwinner puts families at risk of eviction, even if the person is eventually released. And that’s on top of the trauma that an ICE arrest causes those held in inhumane conditions, plus everyone in their family and community.
At the Portland meeting, I had the rare opportunity to ask Collins an unscripted question. Given all of the missteps by ICE, I asked, why did she vote in June to give the agency an additional, unrestricted $38 billion dollars of taxpayer money?
I recall Collins began by blaming Senate Democrats, who had forced an up or down vote on an omnibus bill that provided funding for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection as well as ICE. She noted that due to her efforts, money was included in the bill to buy body cameras for ICE agents, although none were worn by the agents involved in the Biddeford shooting.
Collins assured us that she had spoken to the head of Homeland Security to demand a complete investigation of the Biddeford incident. More than three months later, the Department of Homeland Security has yet to provide any details about what happened. In fact, it’s not even clear if they are conducting an investigation.
Meanwhile, the ICE agent who allegedly shot and killed Guerrero was identified by family members as David Brouillette, a mentally disturbed man with a history of violent behavior. Brouillette’s problematic past kept him from getting hired as a police officer in Hallowell. ICE apparently didn’t know or care about the warning signs that he was unfit for the job.
In August, I visited the moving memorial created spontaneously on the Biddeford street corner where Guerrero died. Among all the tributes, one item stood out: an orange traffic cone bearing a sign that says “Migration is an act of courage.”
I believe Susan Collins has failed to show courage by standing up to the Trump administration and demanding an end to ICE atrocities. She should carry a photo of Guerrero’s daughter Dulce to remind her of the consequences of failing to rein in a rogue agency that’s terrorizing her constituents.