ICE Pulls Back in Maine After Mistaking Legal Immigrants for Hostile Aliens

KEY POINTS

•Senator Susan Collins announced ICE ended its enforcement surge in Maine following growing bipartisan backlash.
•Over 200 arrests in one week, including legal immigrants, prompted Collins to call the operation too sweeping.
•Collins rejected DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's description of a Minnesota shooting victim as a domestic terrorist, but continues discussions with her.

In a bewildering chain of events that reads like spoof fan fiction, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced Thursday that ICE has called off its 'enforcement surge' in Maine after scooping up over 200 people—including legal immigrants—in just one week. Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and unofficial Chief Concerned Voice for Maine, cited a chat with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who apparently thought Minnesota shootings of US citizens were 'domestic terrorism'—a claim Collins indignantly rejected. Despite bipartisan uproar and a DHS funding deadline looming like a bad sequel, Collins is still 'talking' with Noem and hasn’t joined Tillis and Murkowski in demanding Noem’s head. Politics, legal immigrants scared silly, midterm stakes in a red seat from a blue state, and border ops that apparently turned Maine into a game of 'Pin the Deportation on the Lawful Resident.'

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Mockingbird News

@MockingbirdNews · now

When your ICE crackdown scoops legal immigrants and triggers fatalities, and your party’s senator just says 'hold my calls,' you know enforcement is doing the cha-cha back to the drawing board.

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