AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills issued a dire warning in her annual address to state lawmakers Tuesday night: The federal immigration raids sweeping the state are part of an ongoing nationwide attack on democracy.
The speech from Mills, who is a leading Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Susan Collins, marks perhaps the most prominent example of how the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids have upended communities — and potentially electoral politics — around the country. The crackdown has become a political crisis for the White House in recent days following two fatal shootings by federal officers in Minnesota.
“Today, I say to the people of Maine: We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced,” Mills said, to cheers from the Democratic side of the chamber. “And to anyone outside these halls, including any federal officials, I say: If you seek to harm Maine people, you will have to go through me first.”
The Democratic governor’s defiant State of the State address on Tuesday came as a sweeping ICE operation in Maine has prompted widespread protests throughout the state since it began last week. The killing of a protester in Minneapolis by federal immigration officers this weekend has amplified those pressures — and the political stakes.
Mills addressed the ICE operation directly in the opening of her speech, commending the “moral clarity” of Mainers who had risen to “protect their neighbors and their communities against federal agents who seek to intimidate and silence us.”
Federal officials indicated Monday that more than 200 people had been arrested in the immigrant enforcement action in Maine they’re calling Operation Catch of the Day. That effort has followed a pattern of surges in other localities under President Donald Trump’s aggressive revamped enforcement operations.
Mills, who has made opposition to Trump a centerpiece of her Senate campaign, cast the immigration enforcement operation as part of a broader federal overreach that threatens American democracy in Tuesday’s speech — warning “the very idea of America is in peril.” She accused federal officials of arresting people not on “public safety grounds but based on quotas, on skin color, on accents, and religion and ethnic origin.”
“For those who may be unconcerned by the federal government’s abuses of today, affecting our state, I only ask you to consider this — what happens when the federal government finds you to be the problem tomorrow?” Mills said, her voice rising and cracking with emotion in a departure from the more soft-spoken tone she had adopted while ticking through the policy points of her speech.
Much of Mills’ speech was met with partisan reaction in the House chamber in Augusta, with some Republican lawmakers audibly pushing back at Mills’ notion that ICE activities amounted to an abuse of power. Earlier in her speech, Republican state Rep. Jim Thorne interrupted Mills’ call for the federal government to enact universal health care, suggesting it was out of place for a State of the State speech.
Mills’ address to the legislature came days after she asked for a meeting with Trump to call for a withdrawal of ICE agents from Maine. The Maine governor famously confronted Trump at the Oval Office last year over his administration’s intent to withhold federal funding from Maine over the state’s allowance of transgender students’ participation in youth sports.
The politics of Trump’s deportation campaign have rapidly evolved in the wake of two shootings in Minnesota, putting ICE at the forefront of both the Democratic primary between Mills and political newcomer Graham Platner, and their efforts to unseat Collins.
Collins — who has conflicted with the Trump administration more than most Republicans — told Maine Public on Tuesday that she had asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to pause the immigration enforcement surge in both Maine and Minnesota, calling it sweeping and indiscriminate. Those detained in Maine have included a corrections officer trainee who the Cumberland County sheriff said had a legal work permit.
Mills has called on Collins to join with Democrats in holding up DHS funding until ICE changes course. Minutes before her speech, she castigated Collins on social media for not calling for Noem’s ouster and for “pushing to give the agency more funding without any accountability.” Collins oversees ICE’s purse strings as the Senate’s top appropriator, and she has advocated for passing the DHS funding bill as a Saturday shutdown deadline looms, saying it includes new guardrails for ICE such as body cameras and training and would fund other key agencies such as FEMA and the Coast Guard.
The Democratic governor has also faced criticism from her left, with Platner attacking her Monday for her handling of a bill last year that sought to limit law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Platner blasted Mills in an interview Monday for letting the bill idle, saying the governor “stymied the state’s ability to prepare” for the surge of federal immigration agents that “many in the immigrant rights community and the immigrant community knew … was coming” by preventing the law from taking effect sooner.
Mills allowed the bill to become law without her signature in December, which means it does not officially take effect until after the end of this year’s legislative session. However, the Portland Press Herald reported earlier this month that Maine’s public safety commissioner had implemented a directive to immediately comply with the law’s provisions.
Platner dismissed her escalating rhetoric against ICE as politically convenient.
“For the governor now to kind of just read the tea leaves and realize that people are actually really angry about this and want to see action, and then suddenly be like ‘I’m fighting this tooth and nail’ while not even fighting tooth and nail … yeah, that’s going to be a pretty clear distinction for the voters of Maine,” he said.
