Maine Governor Janet Mills action to prevent local and state law enforcement from assisting mass deportations

 https://mailchi.mp/ff411d23f1fc/topsham-local-scoop-6426902?e=9cbe492604

Governor Mills Will Not Veto LD 1971, Preventing Local and State Law Enforcement from Becoming Tools in the Mass Deportation Effort. Reported by Topsham Maine Democrats.

Maine: LD 1971 will limit state, county, and local law enforcement from assisting in immigration enforcement – enforcement that is now violating basic legal and human rights. 

An Act to Protect Workers in This State by Clarifying the Relationship of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies with Federal Immigration Authorities- voted ought to pass as amended. Check details on Maine.gov at this link here. 

After passage, the Governor held the bill, considering whether to veto it or allow it to become law without her signature at the start of the January session. 

On December 15, Governor Mills announced that she would let it become law, effective in 90 days. Law enforcement agencies opposed the bill, having long cooperated with ICE and Border Patrol. But LD 1971 does not prohibit law enforcement from working with federal agencies to solve serious crimes, nor does it prevent compliance with federal law or judicial warrants. 

What it does prohibit are immigration enforcement favors for ICE: holding people beyond their lawful release time, questioning individuals about immigration status, calling ICE or Border Patrol based on immigration suspicions, bringing Border Patrol to routine traffic stops, or sharing nonpublic information about a person’s whereabouts.

Governor Janet Mills

.....recognized, that while cordial relationships between Maine law enforcement and federal immigration agents may be good on many matters, the immigration system that ICE and Border Patrol supports no longer respects due process or human rights. Instead, they support the sweeping incarceration and removal of mostly ordinary people who are not dangerous, many of whom were playing by rules – rules that are suddenly up-ended. History will likely judge this as harshly as the roundup and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The damning evidence is extensive. 

• The large mass transit and detention system supporting mass deportation has been constructed, often severing access to lawyers, family, and medical care.
• Trump has sent the national guard as a show of force to Democratic controlled cities to back up his mass deportation efforts. Even the Republican Supreme Court has, initially, stayed this outreach.
• The Trump administration has willy-nilly reclassified 675,000 legal immigrants as undocumented by arbitrarily revoking their lawful status.
• Parole (permission to be in the country) has been revoked for hundreds of thousands of others who are here on humanitarian grounds and for others trying to unite with citizen family members.
• Expedited removal (deportation without a hearing) has been dramatically expanded beyond the immediacy of the border to the whole country for those who have not been here continuously for at least two years.

Some who appear in court for a due process hearing are arrested and deported without a hearing after their cases are arbitrarily dismissed. This makes others afraid to appear in court as required to maintain their legal status.

People, regardless of how long they have lived here, arrested on suspicion of crossing the border other than at a port of entry (a misdemeanor) are illegally imprisoned without bond hearings, where they could be released while they await their immigration cases.
Asylum applications have been halted regardless of merit.
Immigration judges are being undermined and reduced to pro-deportation rubber stamps.

People are being told to go to third countries as a tactic to block legitimate asylum claims.

The Trump Administration used third countries as places of torture or sent people to dangerous war-torn areas.

At least 170 citizens, including 20 children, have been swept up and detained, sometimes brutally, in ICE and border patrol’s violent show of force.

Governor Mills was right to let LD 1971 become law. Maine’s law enforcement must not be complicit in sending people into this unconstitutional human rights catastrophe. We hope law enforcement will comply with the spirit and letter of the law and agree that this is not something Maine should be assisting with. Rather, let's show support and humanity to those being oppressed.