‘Enhanced’ ICE Activities Are Over In Maine, Says Sen. Susan Collins
It’s been just over a week since the Trump administration announced that it was extending its cross-country immigration crackdown to the state of Maine, calling its operation there “Operation Catch of the Day.”
Well, as it turns out, the operation didn’t last much longer than a day.
Or at least that’s what GOP Sen. Susan Collins said Thursday, Jan. 29, while also calling on the Department of Homeland Security to end its occupation of Minnesota.
From Maine Morning Star:
The Republican senator said she had several “direct conversations” with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem since the agency launched its operation over a week ago, which comes after she’d received no information from the agency at the start of its heightened presence. While not saying when the operation ended, Collins said in a statement, “There are currently no ongoing or planned large-scale ICE operations here.”
It is unclear how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity will look moving forward. Neither DHS nor ICE responded to requests to confirm it ended its large-scale operation, why it did so and how agent presence or tactics in the state would change.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, who said she can’t confirm the announcement as she’s yet to get any response from DHS since the operation began, warned that if there is a reduced federal presence in Maine, it does not amount to a policy change.
“What we saw during this operation: individuals who are legally allowed to be in the United States, whether by lawful presence or an authorized period of stay, following the rules, and being detained anyway,” Pingree said in a statement. “That is not limited to this one operation. That has been the pattern of this Administration’s immigration enforcement over the past year, and there is no indication that policy has changed.”
Rep. Pingree is only saying what state and local officials have been saying in virtually every major city where ICE and Border Patrol agents have been deployed, and now—since the Trump administration buried itself in backlash over its attempt at smearing Alex Pretti after he was fatally shot by agents in Minneapolis just weeks after the high-profile killing of Renee Nicole Good—even Republican legislators are trying to reign in the MAGA monster they all helped create.
President Donald Trump and his stooges have still failed to grasp how unpopular their operations in the state have been, both in the U.S. and abroad. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Minneapolis blocked the administration from targeting immigrants who legally reside in the Twin Cities area.
As for Maine, earlier this week, we reported that citizens in the state who volunteered to monitor ICE activity in their communities were reporting that federal agents were showing up at their homes to threaten and intimidate them. Mind you, Maine is the whitest state in the nation, and it’s never been anyone’s idea of a sanctuary for the undocumented, so it’s not even clear what the feds have been doing there anyway, besides appeasing Trump’s need to weaponize his authority against any state where Democrats are outwardly opposing him.
If Maine has gotten itself out of the crosshairs of Trump’s chaos already, it should count itself lucky.
All of America should be so lucky.
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