BANGOR, Maine — The federal immigration crackdown in Maine may have ended, but the political fallout could continue to reverberate through the 2026 election.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills launched her first Senate campaign ad on Friday — and it’s focused on attacking Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Political newcomer Graham Platner, competing with Mills for the Democratic nomination, held an anti-ICE protest at Sen. Susan Collins’ offices in Maine on Thursday, calling for her to block funds for the agency.
The message from both Democrats was clear: Immigration enforcement politics is not going away, and they think it could be a winning issue as they look to unseat the only Republican senator up for reelection this year in a state former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024.
But Collins’ Thursday announcement that ICE was ending its immigration enforcement campaign in Maine — dubbed Operation Catch of the Day by the Department of Homeland Security — released some of the pressure that had been building in the state for more than a week, with local leaders expressing an initial sense of relief.
That campaign had left the state’s immigrant communities hiding in fear and Democrats and activists raging at their treatment. The surge disrupted life for many in southern Maine, with decreased attendance in schools, legal immigrants afraid to go to work and observers trailing ICE agents in the state.
Now, in the aftermath of an operation that led to more than 200 arrests and prompted widespread protests, lawmakers and community leaders are navigating the upheaval left behind. The political impact continues to ripple.
Collins’ announcement Thursday morning, which implied her conversations with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had helped sway the decision, is emblematic of how she wants voters to think of her: a powerful pragmatist who can get results, including by standing up to her own party. And it was a high-profile reminder of her longstanding case that her senior role in Washington helps her deliver for the Pine Street State.
Still, Democrats and activists, buoyed by rapidly shifting public opinion around immigration enforcement after videos of violent arrests and two fatal shootings in Minneapolis, are redoubling efforts for broader restrictions on ICE and its funding — along with a reckoning on what happened in Maine. Reports of the end of the operation in Maine, they said, are not enough.
“Senator Collins is going to try to use this moment to trick us. To say that she, somehow, used her power to impose upon ICE,” Platner said in protests at the senator’s Portland and Bangor offices on Thursday, held hours after the end of the surge was announced.
He mocked what he called a “pinky promise” she received from Noem to cheers from dozens of supporters who had gathered in Bangor in single-digit temperatures. “We all know it’s nonsense. What she is actually doing is trying to justify to us why she is about to try to give them 9 billion more dollars in funding.”
Platner demanded that Collins, the Senate’s top appropriator, cut off funding for ICE entirely, saying the Trump administration could not be trusted to follow the law.
Collins advocated for passing a DHS funding bill that Democrats blocked this week, citing its funding for body cameras for federal officers as well as de-escalation training. Negotiations are likely to continue in Washington after lawmakers agreed to pass just a two-week stopgap. Failure to pass DHS funding would not stop ICE, as the agency is well-funded from Trump’s major budget bill last summer, but Democrats are hoping to leverage anger at the agency to pressure the GOP for reforms. A Collins spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
The Maine senator’s positioning still held her somewhat as an outlier. Maine Republicans largely expressed support for federal immigration operations in the state while accusing Mills and Democrats of ginning up conflict with law enforcement. Local Republicans were largely quiet about Collins’ news of the drawdown.
Mills, in an interview earlier in the week, derided Collins’ calls for retraining ICE officers, telling POLITICO that the “horse was out of the barn already.” On Thursday, she characterized the drawdown of ICE operations as insufficient, calling for Noem’s removal at DHS as well as congressional action to halt ICE funding until measures are in place at the agency to prevent what she characterized as “abuses of power.”
“Until there are substantive measures and changes in place, no state — including Maine — is protected from the weaponization of Federal law enforcement agencies against its own citizens by the Trump Administration,” she said in a statement on Thursday.
Mills and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, a Democrat, sent a letter to Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons on Friday demanding information about the immigrants arrested in the state and where they are now.
Community leaders and lawmakers are also working to understand what the drawdown means in practice, what happened to those detained by ICE and how to begin restoring trust among immigrants who have barely left their homes in weeks.
“It is welcome news. ICE operations in Maine have failed to improve public safety and have caused lasting damage to our communities,” said Carl Sheline, the mayor of Lewiston, which is home to a large Somali American population and was one of the Maine cities to see significant ICE activity. “We will continue working to ensure that those who were wrongfully detained by ICE are returned to us.”
Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat from Biddeford, said among those detained by ICE was a man named Marcos, whom Fecteau had previously employed as a contractor working on his home. Fecteau said he talked on Thursday to the man’s wife, who said he was at an ICE facility in Arizona two days earlier, but the ICE database was no longer showing his whereabouts.
“Over the last week and a half there have been people in Maine who have been arrested and detained unlawfully. We want answers for those people. Who they are, where they are, what was the reason for their detention. Those things need to be answered,” Fecteau said. “I hope that Senator Collins, who clearly has some influence here — she spoke with Kristi Noem yesterday — I hope that was part of the conversation as well.”
In Augusta on Thursday, Maine lawmakers heard testimony over a bill that would require ICE to obtain judicial warrants to search private spaces of schools and health care facilities, among other locations.
Mills on Thursday threw her weight behind the new bill, citing in part the destabilizing effects of the recent surge. It was a notable move for the former prosecutor, who faced heat from progressives and Platner for not taking a stronger stance last year when she allowed a bill limiting law enforcement cooperation with ICE to go into effect without her signature, rather than signing it outright.
Activists and observers who had been trailing ICE in Maine noted some agents appeared to be off duty on Thursday, reflecting the drawdown.
“It’s good news. I hope it’s true. I hope that we can all find peace and rest in the next coming days,” Eric Nathanson, an activist with Jewish Action Maine who was arrested alongside other faith leaders earlier in the week while protesting at Collins’ Portland office. “If the surge is on pause, we reiterate the goal of no additional funding even more strongly.”
But the images and experiences from the past week were not easily forgotten.
“Three people in the past week were abducted in front of my workplace. My coworkers had to watch an ICE agent beat and drag people out of cars,” Nathanson said. “We will stay strong and stay vigilant.”
Politics
