Legal News & Advocacy
The Latest on Mass Deportation Policy in Maine
Over the past few months in Maine, ILAP has seen a dramatic and devastating rise in immigration enforcement, with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arresting 113 people in April alone, according to their own announcement. Enforcement in Maine - like across the country - is indiscriminate and broadly targeting and affecting all of Maine’s immigrant communities.
The fear and chaos that the Trump administration is spreading is also causing tremendous harm, with ILAP’s clients and others sharing that they are afraid to go about their daily lives, including going to work, sending their kids to school, pursuing college and adult education, and much more. We’re also seeing the destruction of what public trust might have existed between law enforcement and immigrant communities.
ILAP clients have shared they have been scared to call the police even when they wanted to for their own safety. Crucial public safety information is being lost, including reports of domestic violence and other types of abuse. The losses for Maine will be exponential.
One of the alarming but not surprising patterns here in Maine is the prevalence of state and local law enforcement assisting the federal administration in its mass deportation agenda. This is central to the administration’s plan: getting public safety resources from states and municipalities is the only way they can reach their extraordinarily cruel goal of one million deportations a year.
The 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the states from being forced to hand over their resources for purposes like enforcement, so the administration needs to get the states to hand over their public safety resources and taxpayer dollars voluntarily.
There are two ways the administration is doing this:
Affirmatively getting local law enforcement to agree to divert their resources to do civil immigration enforcement through formal programs, such as 287(g) agreements.
Stopping states, counties, and municipalities, from prohibiting the other types of law enforcement conduct that lead to people getting put in the deportation pipeline outside of formal programs (for example, needlessly interrogating people about their immigration status at minor traffic stops and then turning people over to immigration officers).
The administration’s tactics for getting states, counties, and municipalities to assist them are also unsurprising. They include threatening to withhold federal funding if states and localities take common sense measures to protect themselves against the harm of mass enforcement and spreading misinformation and fear in the general public. More specifically, the administration is aggressively pushing a false narrative that there is some kind of link between being an immigrant and criminality and public safety. No such link exists.
Complicity of Local Law Enforcement
that documents the full extent of how many Maine residents are being impacted by mass deportation policies, ILAP is seeing major shifts and patterns emerging. In addition to ramped up, direct enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), ILAP is seeing many people being handed over to immigration officers by state and local law enforcement at minor traffic stops. In addition to drivers, Maine law enforcement have needlessly interrogated passengers and even bystanders about their immigration status and have handed them over to immigration officers simply based on their suspected lack of immigration status. Some of the impacted Maine residents were known to have valid work permits and be in lawful processes.
We are also seeing Maine jails voluntarily holding people past the time their criminal charges or cases have been resolved in order to hand them over to ICE. This happens through ICE detainer requests, which are nonmandatory and unenforceable and have been found to be unconstitutional as they result in people being imprisoned by local law enforcement even after they have been cleared of any criminal charges or wrongdoing.
Jails in Maine are currently holding people for ICE, and some facilities have had longtime contracts with the federal government. While ILAP is opposed to immigration detention in and of itself, as it’s a needless and cruel practice, so long as it continues, our priority is ensuring detained individuals can meaningfully exercise their legal rights. When people are held far from home, they often lose access to legal counsel, family, and support—with serious consequences for their cases. Because of this, we’re also seeing the federal government swiftly and punitively transferring people out of Maine, as well as bringing people who are not from Maine to be held by ICE in Maine jails.
As we move forward in this environment, defending Maine’s immigrant communities from mass enforcement policies and addressing systemic issues around enforcement and detention in Maine will continue to be one of ILAP’s top policy priorities.
Advocacy in the maine legislature
This Maine legislative session, ILAP’s advocacy focused on four key bills aimed at increasing access to immigration legal services in Maine and protecting immigrant communities and our state as a whole from local and state law enforcement needlessly engaging in civil immigration enforcement.
LD 1022
LD 1022 would sustain and increase critical civil legal aid funding in Maine to avoid a funding cliff and help ensure that everyone in Maine, regardless of income, can access the legal help they need to stand up for their rights.
LD 1259
LD 1259 would protect the rights of Maine residents as well as Maine’s public safety resources and economy by prohibiting local law enforcement in Maine from voluntarily contracting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 287(g) programs, one of the Trump administration’s central mass deportation policies.
LD 1832
LD 1832 improves judicial efficiency and increases access to legal assistance for non-citizen children in Maine by clarifying and updating the state’s existing law related to Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) classification.
LD 1971
LD 1971 would protect the rights of Maine residents as well as Maine’s public safety resources and economy by prohibiting local law enforcement in Maine from voluntarily assisting federal immigration officers with mass deportation.
