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Posted on 01/29/2026 11:44:27 AM PST by DFG
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins said early Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has ended its enhanced immigration operation in the state of Maine.
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.”
While the public and elected leaders have grown increasingly vocal in opposition to ICE amid killings and aggressive tactics, a broader look into ICE’s history of deadly force shows it is not necessarily unique to the current moment.
Similarly, Gov. Janet Mills said that the reported end “does not end the pain and suffering that they have inflicted on communities across our state — people who have been terrorized, mothers who have been separated from their children, businesses who have been threatened, all by their own government.”
Maine’s Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project is seeing a drop in new requests for emergency legal help from people detained by ICE, after responding to over 60 in the past week. The need for legal assistance remains for those that were swept up in the operation, mostly asylum seekers without criminal records, Executive Director Sue Roche said.
“The impact of what is happening here in Maine will be felt for a long time — people’s lives are altered forever, and we have a lot of work and rebuilding ahead,” Roche said in a statement. “There is no guarantee an ICE surge or operation will not happen again, and the increased enforcement in Maine since the beginning of the Trump administration has been devastating in and of itself.”
After federal agents fatally shoot two U.S. citizens, Collins has criticized some of ICE’s tactics, though she continues to advocate to fund the agency as a possible government shutdown looms. Collins has not gone as far as some other Senate Republicans who have called for Noem’s resignation.
“ICE and Customs and Border Patrol will continue their normal operations that have been ongoing here for many years,” Collins said, a reference to Border Patrol’s authority to conduct operations as far as 100 miles from the border, which includes all of Maine. “I will continue to work with the Secretary on efforts to end illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and other transnational criminal activity.”
When launching its operation in Maine, DHS said it was targeting “the worst of the worst criminals,” claiming 1,400 targets. On Monday, the agency said it had arrested more than 200 people — a figure that has not been independently verified by Maine Morning Star, nor community organizers or state leaders as DHS has declined to share specifics.
There are several documented cases of the agency detaining people without criminal records who are pursuing lawful immigration processes. In her statement Thursday, Mills, a Democrat who is challenging Collins in the upcoming U.S. Senate election, said, “the people of Maine deserve to know the identities of every person taken from here, the legal justification for doing so, where they are being held, and what the Federal government’s plan for them are.”
Collins and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden said they were supportive of ICE’s operation in their state so long as it was focused on people who have engaged in criminal activity, though data since the start of Trump’s second term had already shown the majority of people detained have no criminal convictions.
Since the shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday — the second person killed and third shot by federal agents in Minneapolis this month — calls to defund the agency have increased. Mills called on Congress to bring Noem before them for a hearing and to cut off further funding for ICE “until their lawless tactics and dangerous behavior cease.”
In Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Senate Democrats blocked a must-pass spending bill because it did not include specific reforms to federal immigration enforcement, including a ban on masks, the end of roving patrols, tightening the rules governing the use of warrants, and coordination between ICE and state and local law enforcement, among others.
As Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Collins has been central to the effort to put a spending package together that could pass both chambers by Jan. 31, or risk another government shutdown.
The original version of the spending package, without the reforms, already passed the U.S. House with Golden among the handful of Democrats to vote in support.
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And why did this dipshit think she has to be the one to announce it?
Maine must be getting low on illegals.
Isn’t ICE separate from DHS?
Now I see why she was quiet. Must have had a deal.
Too bad they didn’t negotiate 10 important votes from her with this stand-down.
enhanced immigration operation
LARGE -SCALE
“Sen. Collins says Homeland Security ended enhanced ICE operation in Maine”. Thank goodness Sen. we can pick blueberries in the summer peacefully with no worries.
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