Maine: MVP Partners Ramp Up Resistance to ICE

The following was written by Tony Mack, MVP Maine Advisor, and lightly edited for clarity.

As expected, while ICE agents continue to escalate violence in Minneapolis, their tactics are rapidly spreading to other states. 

This dynamic is part of the authoritarian playbook: when one target starts to organize resistance, divert attention to another one that isn’t expecting it. While Minneapolis boils, ICE has ramped up activities in Maine.

The ICE Playbook in Maine: Minnesota All Over Again

We are now more than a week into an ICE surge in Maine that has terrorized the state’s immigrant communities. The administration claims to be targeting 1,400 individuals with criminal records — the “worst of the worst” — but the majority of those abducted in Maine have no criminal record at all, and many are in the country legally. 

As immigrant communities are gripped by fear, schools are seeing a major drop in attendance, with many considering shifting back to remote learning. And with residents afraid to leave their homes to go to work, mayors from cities with immigrant communities have warned the governor of a wave of impending evictions.

Organizers Stepping Up

As ICE ramps up operations, the state’s immigrant-rights groups have quickly organized to counter their authoritarian occupation. These groups have mobilized within days to focus public attention on the ICE ramp-up, including through public protests:

• In Lewiston —  a center of Somali and other African immigrant communities — 1,000 people showed up for a protest on Saturday, organized by MVP partner Community Organizing Alliance.
• Hundreds of volunteers have now mobilized to observe and document ICE activity. 
• In Portland, where ICE has so far been concentrated, observers are posted at schools and bus stops throughout the city’s immigrant neighborhoods.

Organizers have also moved quickly to provide direct support by mobilizing volunteers to bring food, medicine, and financial assistance to those being targeted so they can shelter in place, and by providing support to families whose primary wage earners have been abducted. 

This vigilance and community protection has already had a meaningful impact: on the first day of the surge, ICE reported 50 arrests, but the number of people arrested each day since volunteers began mobilizing has dropped significantly. ICE has responded aggressively — pulling guns on peaceful protestors and observers, following volunteers to their homes, and threatening them on their doorsteps. 

Launching a New Statewide Coalition

Meanwhile, a strategy for statewide mass mobilization to get ICE out of Maine is just coming together. On Monday evening, frontline organizers called an emergency meeting attended by the state’s major labor unions, statewide issue and organizing groups, and immigrant rights organizations to discuss the creation of a coalition to coordinate such a strategy. They agreed to coordinate “mass nonviolent collective actions across Maine to build and strengthen the social movement that will channel people into organized and politicized tactics,” capable of generating the sustained pressure needed to force ICE out of the state. 

The vast majority of Mainers are outraged at what is happening in their state. This effort will bring those community members into effective, strategic, and sustained action. The new coalition will announce its official launch at a press conference this Friday.

The crises we are witnessing in Minnesota and now Maine will continue to spread to other cities. But so too will the resistance as our movements continue to grow. Organizing in Minnesota, Maine, and anywhere under federal occupation will both minimize the harm and build anti-ICE pressure and help slow authoritarian momentum and, eventually, reverse the tide.

How to Support the Work in Maine

MVP Rapid Response Fund

The Movement Voter Project’s Rapid Response Fund supports organizing groups working to protect communities from ICE and the Trump authoritarian occupations of US cities. While this fund was initially created to support work in Minnesota, it is now supporting other communities targeted by ICE around the country, including Maine.

Maine Solidarity Fund 

The Maine Solidarity Fund is an initiative of the People’s Coalition for Safety & Justice (PCSJ), a collaborative of Maine’s frontline organizations responding to the current crisis, organized by Presente! Maine. 

The Solidarity Fund is providing funds for:

1. Direct Community Support: This includes bail and bond payments for those unlawfully detained, legal representation and defense attorney fees, and emergency family support to allow families to shelter in place and provide income to families whose primary income earners are detained.
2. Organizing, Rapid Response, & Community Protection: This includes funds for the organizing work required to prevent harm, respond quickly, and build long-term safety, including: rapid response and detention support coordination; know-your-rights education and community trainings; and coalition infrastructure that allows frontline organizers to act quickly and collectively.