An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer’s badge is seen as federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court in New York City on June 10, 2025. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The governor postponed her decision on a bill restricting local authorities from carrying out federal immigration enforcement until next year. Meanwhile, daily U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest rates have doubled in Maine since President Donald Trump took office, new data show.
The Maine Legislature passed the proposal in June — by just one vote in the House of Representatives and seven in the Senate — after it was one of the most debated on the chamber floors and following considerable changes in committee to narrow its scope.
The amended version of the bill, LD 1971, prevents state and local law enforcement from detaining someone solely on the basis of a federal immigration-related request but other restrictions — such as banning local authorities from providing office space for immigration authorities and limiting when state employees can inquire about a person’s immigration status — were removed.
With the Legislature now adjourned between its two-year session, Gov. Janet Mills opted to hold the measure until lawmakers return in January. Mills can then either veto the bill within the first three days of session or allow it to become law without her signature.
During public hearings, law enforcement authorities raised concern about the bill hindering federal partnerships that sometimes touch on some immigration issues, such as drug enforcement task forces, which led bill sponsor Rep. Deqa Dhalac (D-South Portland) to amend it so only work done by local police for the primary purpose of immigration enforcement would be banned.
Mills understands the motivation behind the legislation to provide clarity to Maine law enforcement, her press secretary Ben Goodman said, but she believes it will do the opposite.
“The bill is both overly broad and confusing, as it establishes a complicated legal regime of the type of interactions that are or are not permitted with federal law enforcement,” Goodman said in a statement.
However, Sue Roche, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, Maine’s only statewide immigration legal services organization, believes the bill would provide necessary guardrails.
“LD 1971 is about ensuring Maine’s state and local law enforcement aren’t using our limited taxpayer dollars to do civil immigration enforcement for the federal government and that they aren’t handing Maine residents over to immigration officers just based on their immigration status alone,” Roche said in a statement.
The full extent to which state and local law enforcement are helping with immigration enforcement is not clear, but ILAP has tracked 17 traffic stops since March 2025 where such authorities have handed over at least 35 Maine residents and workers to immigration officers based on their immigration status.
“While Maine’s state and local resources should not be wasted to investigate immigration status in any case, many of those impacted were known to be in a lawful immigration process, have a valid work permit, and no criminal record,” Roche said.
Immigration arrests increase in Maine
ICE arrests in Maine have been increasing, particularly in recent weeks.
Since Trump took office, ICE has arrested nearly 100 people in Maine, according to the Deportation Data Project. That’s about a 50% increase compared to 2024 numbers, according to the data collected through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against ICE brought by the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Arrest rates in Maine and other states specifically surged in recent weeks, after Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, demanded that ICE ramp up arrests to 3,000 people per day.
The vast majority of these recent arrests in Maine were not people convicted of a crime. According to the data, only about 20% were people convicted of a crime, whereas about 47% were people with pending criminal charges and 32% were people with immigration violations.
These figures don’t include arrests made by U.S. Border Patrol, which hit a nearly 24-year high in Maine in April with more than 100 arrests in just that month.
Immigration arrests have also increased nationwide, more than doubling in 38 states, according to the data.
There is now more funding allocated to further ramp up immigration enforcement, with the federal budget Trump signed into law earlier this month securing more than $170 billion for this aim. The package would give the Department of Homeland Security $45 billion for the detention of immigrants and give its immigration enforcement arm another $30 billion to hire up to 10,000 new agents.
Formal agreements with immigration authorities
Maine lawmakers opted to postpone until next year another related bill before it got a chance to be considered by the full Legislature. The Judiciary Committee carried over LD 1259, which seeks to explicitly prohibit state or local law enforcement agencies or officers from entering into contracts with federal immigration enforcement authorities.
Wells Police Department is the only Maine agency to contract with ICE under what’s called the 287(g) program, which Trump revived to bolster ICE’s capacity by deputizing local police officers to detain immigrants, an authority otherwise generally reserved to federal authorities. While that agreement is still in place, the department has yet to decide whether or when it will act on it beyond training.
Wells Police Chief Jo-Ann Putnam announced in early May a “wait-and-see approach” to credentialing its officers under the program in light of the pending legislation. As of Tuesday, Putnam told Maine Morning Star officers had already completed the training for the program but had not yet been credentialed, which Putnam said meant they have not yet performed any of the functions allowed under the agreement.
“Nothing has changed,” Putnam said. “Absolutely nothing has changed.”
In light of the two related bills being pushed off to next year, Putnam said she had not yet decided what that will mean for her officers’ participation in the program until then. “I’m not 100% sure how long they would hold the training for,” she said.
If they start undertaking federal immigration enforcement, Putnam reiterated that Wells police would only enforce immigration detainers for people who are designated as “criminal aliens” if officers come across them in daily work, though the agreement permits broader enforcement.
Wells Police Department remained listed as a participating agency in the program on the ICE website as of July 8.
Residents who’ve organized against the agreement are pushing for a permanent termination. After the pause on credentialing, they submitted more than 900 signatures to the town from Wells residents in favor of withdrawing from the contract.