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‘Bush league policing’: Local criticism grows in Maine as hundreds arrested in ICE surge
Since the surge began in Maine, school attendance has dropped and people without criminal records have been detained, as protests ramp up.
Federal immigration officials in Maine pulled a car over last week amid the ICE surge called “Operation Catch of the Day” and arrested a Cumberland County correctional officer.
“He was squeaky clean… He’s definitely not a criminal,” Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said. “We’re being told one story, which is totally different than what’s occurring or what occurred last night.”
The sheriff said his agency determined the recruit, who was hired almost a year ago, was legally authorized to work in the U.S. through 2029 during a “rigorous hiring process,” Joyce said during a press conference.
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The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents then left the corrections officer’s car “with the windows down, the lights on, unsecure and unoccupied. They left it right on the side of the street. Folks, that’s bush league policing,” Joyce said.
Since ICE launched an operation in Maine, more than 200 “illegal aliens” have been arrested in the past five days, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in an email Wednesday, including “the worst of the worst from the first day of operations.”
But, school attendance has also dropped, people without criminal records are being detained, and nearly a dozen people have been arrested at protests, according to police, advocates, and local reports.
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Portland police have arrested several protesters, including at a hotel where ICE agents were staying and at Sen. Susan Collins’s office in Portland. More than 50 people gathered at the Residence Inn on Fore Street last Thursday and Friday nights, where protesters believed ICE agents were staying, the Portland Press Herald. Six people were arrested.
Nine anti-ICE protesters were arrested at Sen. Susan Collins’s Portland office Tuesday, where 50 people gathered to call on the Republican lawmaker to end funding for ICE, according to police and news reports. Her office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Local officials: ICE is not targeting ‘worst of the worst’
As DHS announced the initiative’s first arrests last week, Portland Mayor Mark Dion criticized the agency’s description of those arrested as “the worst of the worst,” including a person who was convicted of an OUI. Others included people previously convicted of aggravated assault, cocaine possession, and false imprisonment.
“Those were (ICE’s) top picks to show you the state of crime and justice in Maine. An OUI?” Dion, previously described as Portland’s “law-and-order candidate,” said last week. “If ICE has an issue with criminal aliens, let them actually be criminals.”
Many people in Maine arrested by ICE either have no criminal records or have not been found guilty of filed charges, said Anna Welch, the founding director of the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Maine School of Law, where she’s a professor.
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Masked agents arrested a civil engineer from Colombia, who colleagues said had a work visa after earning his master’s degree from the University of Maine, the Maine Monitor reported. A man recently married to a U.S. citizen, with a pending asylum case and no criminal record, was also detained during the surge, per Maine Public.
“We’re talking about subjecting folks to indefinite detention, movement out of the state, and for many, without the help of a lawyer and even with the help of a lawyer, at risk of deportation,” Welch said. “What we’re seeing on the ground is not, is not the targeted enforcement against the worst of the worst, but rather, pretty indiscriminate targeting of our Black and brown neighbors.”
Detainees removed from Portland jail amid local criticism
Welch said that all 62 immigration detainees at Cumberland County Jail, who were all detained prior to the recent surge, were rapidly moved out of Portland last week, causing confusion and concern. Most were sent to Boston before going to Louisiana “or other more remote detention centers.”
The moves came shortly after Joyce, the sheriff in Cumberland County, held his press conference criticizing ICE after his corrections officer was detained. Since then, another corrections office in York County was detained by agents outside a scheduled immigration appointment in Scarborough, the Herald reported.
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“ICE is a legitimate law enforcement agency with a legitimate function. Based on the presentation by Mr. Homan a year ago, I came out of that with the idea that it was going to be something that everyone could get behind,” Joyce said. “Clearly, their motives are a little different than what we’ve been told, or at least in this case.”
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