Trump's ICE Surge In Maine Complicates Life For GOP Sen. Susan Collins

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) said she did not see a need for ICE agents to swarm into her state, which has one of the smallest immigrant populations in the country.

“I don’t see the rationale for a large number of ICE agents to come in,” she told HuffPost at the time.

President Donald Trump’s administration disagreed, and the crackdown coming to Maine is making life difficult for Collins, who’s facing renewed attacks for not doing enough to stand up to Trump as the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.

“Congress, including Susan Collins, should curtail funding for ICE until they stop their aggressive tactics that are just instilling fear and anxiety in people across the state,” Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who is vying to challenge Collins in November’s elections, said in a statement on Friday.

“We will not turn a blind eye as this president threatens the rights of our people here in Maine, and we will continue to stand for the rights and values that Maine people have always stood for,” said Mills, a former state attorney general who is running with the backing of Democratic leadership.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation, dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day,” started earlier this week in the Pine Tree State, targeting immigrants from Somalia and elsewhere in Africa. The state, and especially the small city of Lewiston, has taken in a large number of Somali refugees and immigrants fleeing civil war in recent decades, helping to compensate for an otherwise aging and sometimes shrinking population.

Trump has hurled racist and derogatory rhetoric at the Somali community following a fraud scandal in Minnesota that involved some Somali immigrants. ICE agents have often used violent tactics to go after immigrants in Minnesota as well as in Maine.

Graham Platner, Mills’ progressive rival for the Democratic Senate nomination, suggested both Mills and Collins ought to do more to push back against the administration’s crackdown. The military veteran and oyster fisherman urged his followers to meet ICE agents with resistance and said he planned to join protests against ICE in Maine this weekend.

“They are simply going after people for their race, for their accents, just for the suspicion they might not be here legally,” Platner said in a video posted online. “Many of them are here legally, and the ICE agents don’t care.”

“This is not the time for our leaders to drag their feet or merely express their concern,” Platner added. “Simply saying we will fight back is not enough. We need to actually fight back. That means organizing. It means showing up in the streets.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has yet to formally announce her reelection bid but is widely expected to run for a sixth term in the Senate.

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

But it’s not just Collins’ political rivals criticizing her. ICE’s tactics have drawn criticism from other law enforcement agencies in Maine.

Kevin Joyce, a sheriff in Maine’s Cumberland County, criticized ICE on Thursday for detaining one of his recruits, who has no criminal record, and for leaving his vehicle running on a city street, a move he called “bush league policing.”

Natasha Irving, a top prosecutor in Maine, called ongoing ICE raids “unnecessary and unwanted” and said ICE agents are “terrorizing the people of my district,” according to the Midcoast Villager.

Both officials hail from predominantly Democratic areas of Maine, a left-leaning state, but polls show such criticism of Trump’s immigration crackdown is increasingly a shared sentiment after an ICE officer fatally shot a woman in Minnesota earlier this month.

Collins has avoided criticizing ICE tactics directly, other than to say people who are in this country legally should not be targets of ICE investigations. The senator issued a statement on Thursday that reminded protesters to “be careful not to interfere with law enforcement efforts” as they demonstrate against ICE and noted that people who are “improperly detained” are able to seek assistance through the legal system.

The senator also expressed her support for a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security that the Senate is expected to take up next week, which includes $20 million for body cameras and $2 million for de-escalation training for federal immigration agents.

“At this time of heightened tensions, these steps could help improve trust, accountability, and safety,” Collins said in her statement. “I hope that Congress will adopt these measures quickly.”

Many Democrats have criticized the bill, however, since it includes no actual constraints on ICE’s tactics. The legislation also provides $10 billion for ICE, on top of the massive $75 billion the agency received from Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which Collins helped advance but ultimately voted against last year. It also provides $18 billion for Customs and Border Protection, which is aiding ICE’s detention operations across the country.

ICE officers aren’t just detaining immigrants with criminal records. They’re going after immigrants with no criminal history who have lived in the U.S. for decades. They’re also picking up U.S. citizens and detaining some of them for days. ICE has said its officers are allowed to enter homes without a judicial warrant, undermining Americans’ civil liberties that are enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Collins has yet to formally announce her reelection bid but is widely expected to run for a sixth term in the Senate. The Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), announced this week it would spend $42 million in support of her campaign. A GOP victory in the state would essentially eliminate Democratic chances of winning the Senate.

Collins recently drew Trump’s ire after she voted along with four other Senate Republicans to advance a war powers resolution rebuking the president’s military actions in Venezuela. Trump reportedly tore into Collins in “a profanity-laced” phone call and even threatened to support her opponent, giving Republicans trying to defend their Senate majority yet another headache.