By bizn_fun 
Maine, the US’s whitest state, has been shaken by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, a crackdown that could threaten Republican control of the Senate in November’s crucial midterm elections.
Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents launched “Operation Catch of the Day” in the state on 21 January, targeting “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens who have terrorized communities”, according to the administration.
As critics said the operation had caused “pain and suffering”, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican facing a re-election this year in a state that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, claimed she spoke with Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who told her the operation has ended at her request.
But residents doubt Collins has defanged ICE and say the agency is still making its presence known and causing chaos in the bucolic state nicknamed Vacationland.
“I don’t think anyone here has any trust that will be lasting,” Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO, a state federation of more than 200 local labor unions in Maine. “You can’t turn a tiger into a vegetarian.”
Workers and labor unions in Maine claimed ICE is racially profiling people and has created an environment where people of color are under “an occupation” impeding their freedom of movement.
A day after ICE launched its operation, Kelli Brennan, a nurse at Maine medical center in Portland, gave a co-worker a ride early in the morning. The co-worker, a naturalized US citizen and person of color, was fearful of traveling alone as an immigrant during the operation.
After they passed a group of ICE agents on the way to work, a vehicle with two ICE officers inside followed them, rolled its window down, with one of the officers calling her a “Karen” for briefly filming with her phone.
“The exchange from the male driver was, ‘I’m gonna arrest three more families today, just for you, ha ha ha – and this evil, sinister laugh,” Brennan said. “We were both stunned and shocked.”
DHS did not comment on her experience or other similar reports from ICE agents’ behavior toward the public.
Brennan rejected claims from Senator Collins that the operation has ceased.
“ICE is still in town. They’re just blending in better. I don’t necessarily believe what Susan Collins says,” added Brennan.
Co-workers and patients remain fearful, and are still being subjected to harassment from ICE officers, Brennan said, citing the case of a father who was detained by ICE while on their way to the hospital to bring necessities for their newborn baby.
“We’re banding together, and we’re figuring things out, like rides to work, food, donating paid time off and creating a support system. It’s just crazy we’re having to do this,” she said. “You feel like you have to protect your patients from the government and it’s just weird.”
Maine has grown more diverse in recent years but remains the whitest state in the US. The state has a small immigrant population of about 56,000 people, comprising about 4% of the state population.
A recent report by the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition said ICE detainments in the state substantially increased in 2025 from 2024, and said many detainees had no criminal history, even before ICE launched their latest operation in the state, which the agency claimed was targeted at criminals.
On a late Sunday afternoon in January, Derek Ellis, a construction worker and member of Carpenters Local 349, left work to get groceries in Portland, where he witnessed a Black woman with a small child screaming after three ICE agents beelined to her car in the grocery store parking lot, stopped her vehicle while she screamed that she was a US citizen and her toddler child in a car seat screamed as she was torn from her car and put in handcuffs.
“I can hear her yelling, ‘I’m a citizen,’ and they’re just not listening,” Ellis said. “That was just straight-up racial profiling. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it.”
He also cited a co-worker from Burundi, who he said had “done everything right” and jumped through hoops to try to secure US citizenship, who has been sheltering in place and missing work due to the ICE operation.
Claims that the ICE operation in Maine has been halted have not filtered through, said Ellis. “I don’t think the local population trusts it at all, because I still don’t see a lot of folks out at the bus stops or just walking the streets at all yet.”
“It’s been horrific,” said Schlobohm, who noted that ICE operations are a workplace issue, as most detainments occur while individuals are traveling to or from work, or at their work sites. “Over the last two weeks, I would say there has just been a widespread level of fear and outrage that has just touched a lot of different corners of workers lives and of the labor movement.
“In the places where the presence is most intense, it very much feels like what you would understand an occupation to feel like. We have to collectively figure out how to respond.”
Those responses have included protests, assisting neighbors and coworkers with financial and transportation, support in obtaining groceries or rides to work, fundraising, and organizing resistance to push back against ICE, the tactics and behavior, and the mass level of funding and surveillance technology the agency is wielding under the Trump administration.
Todd Chretien, an organizer and local high school Spanish teacher in Portland, dismissed claims from Collins about the ICE operation ending, and emphasized the negative economic effects the operation is still having in Maine.
“ICE’s impact on the local Maine economy has been devastating. Thousands of workers have been sheltering in place, and hundreds of people have been detained,” said Chretien. “Many of our support staff are either citizens or legal residents with work permits, but the racial profiling was so intense that much of our custodial and support staff was unable to work for a couple weeks.”
He cited the case of Micheline Kabakodi Ntumba, a single mother of four and custodian in the school system in Portland who was arrested by ICE. Ntumba’s daughter told the Maine Monitor she has a pending asylum application.A fundraiser for Ntumba, a single mother of four, to cover legal fees, has raised over $38,000.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security defended the detainment of Micheline Kabakodi Ntumba.
“On January 21, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Micheline Kabakodi Ntumba, an illegal alien from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She entered the US on a B-2 tourist visa that required her to depart the US by May 29 2017. She violated the immigration laws of our nation. All of her claims will be heard by an immigration judge,” the spokesperson said. The White House deferred comment to the Department of Homeland Security.
Additionally, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security would not confirm or deny suspending the operation in Maine.
“DHS will continue to enforce the law across the country, as we do every day,” the spokesperson said.
They denied allegations of racial profiling by ICE agents, but then cited the “reasonable suspicion” ruling of the US supreme court in its use of a stay on a lower court’s order.
“Allegations that ICE engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless and categorically false,” the spokesperson said. “Law enforcement uses ‘reasonable suspicion’ to make arrests, as allowed under the fourth amendment to the US constitution. The supreme court has already vindicated us on this position.”
The spokesperson criticized claims and reports documenting negative economic impacts of ICE operations.
“Let’s be clear, if there was any correlation between rampant illegal immigration and a good economy, Biden would have had a booming economy,” the spokesperson added. “Removing these criminals from the streets makes communities safer for business owners and customers.”
They did not answer how many of those 206 individuals detained in Maine by ICE during the operation had criminal records, only citing four undocumented immigrants who they claimed were detained during the op with criminal records, two of which were non-violent records.
Susan Collins’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Democratic frontrunners in the US Senate primary to challenge Collins in November for her Senate seat, Graham Platner and Governor Janet Mills, have criticized ICE’s tactics in Maine and the harm inflicted by the operation on residents.
Polls have shown a close primary race between Platner and Mills. Collins maintaining her seat is crucial for Republicans to hold a majority in the Senate.
A recent Morning Consult poll showed Collins as the second most unpopular US senator in the US: 54% disapprove of her performance compared to 41% who approve.
“I care about material outcomes and reality. I don’t really care about people’s words, and a pinky promise from Kristi Noem is not enough for me to think that we are maybe going to see ICE ramp down operations,” said Platner during an interview with a Portland ABC News affiliate on why he was still holding a protest against Collins over ICE.
“Furthermore, in her statement, she still supports ICE operations, just not this expanded one. An agency that over the past week has abducted people that work for the sheriff’s department, fathers bringing their newborn child home from the hospital, an agency that has murdered American citizens in the street of Minneapolis. That is not an agency that has any welcome in Maine to conduct any operations.”