President Trump’s immigration crackdown is complicating Republicans’ attempts to maintain control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. That dynamic is evident especially in Maine.
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President Trump’s immigration crackdown is complicating attempts by Republicans to maintain their majorities in Congress. In Maine, Republican Senator Susan Collins now faces potentially the most difficult campaign of her decades-long career. Kevin Miller with Maine Public Radio has more.
KEVIN MILLER, BYLINE: As the only Republican senator up for reelection in a state that didn’t back Donald Trump in 2024, Senator Collins was already considered one of the GOP’s most vulnerable incumbents. Then came an immigration enforcement surge, targeting some of the state’s largest and most diverse communities.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Frigid temperatures did not stop ICE from hitting the ground running here…
MILLER: While Homeland Security officials said they were targeting, quote, “the worst of the worst,” eyewitness reports and videos of masked, heavily armed agents allege they were casting a much wider net – two asylum-seekers legally working at county jails, a month-old baby showered with glass after agents broke a car window to snag his father, an immigrant with no criminal record. In stepped Collins.
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SUSAN COLLINS: I called Secretary Noem, whom I know, and I told her that I felt that ICE officials had gone too far, that they were not focusing on people who were here illegally and had criminal records.
MILLER: That’s Collins in a recent interview with Maine Public Radio. The 30-year Senate veteran holds arguably one of the most influential positions in Congress as chair of the Senate committee that controls federal spending, including for Secretary Kristi Noem’s agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
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COLLINS: I kept pushing her to suspend and cease the enhanced operation in the state of Maine, and she agreed to do so.
MILLER: But Collins’ critics back home aren’t buying it.
GRAHAM PLATNER: Susan Collins did not make that happen.
MILLER: That’s Graham Platner, the gruff-talking oysterman and Democrat, whose explosive Senate campaign has attracted huge crowds since the summer. Platner argues that the real reason ICE reduced its presence in Maine is because communities organized against them.
PLATNER: She has done absolutely nothing to try to rein in the behavior of the Trump administration over the last year. Hell, she did nothing to rein it in last time either.
MILLER: Platner’s chief opponent in the June Democratic primary, two-term Governor Janet Mills, has also made ICE and the immigration crackdown a key campaign issue. And like Platner, Mills accused Collins of not using her position to push back on ICE.
JANET MILLS: And right now, she’s voting to fund ICE without any standards, without any substantive controls, without any accountability.
MILLER: Collins responds to such criticisms by pointing to $22 million for body cameras and de-escalation training for ICE agents that’s in the Republican version of the DHS budget bill still stalled in Congress. The agency is currently shut down as Democrats demand broader reforms within ICE, such as prohibiting masked agents before approving funding. Collins says it, quote, “remains to be seen” whether President Trump’s policies will be a factor in her reelection bid.
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COLLINS: I am running on my record of independence. I support the president, as I have every other president that I’ve worked with, when I think he is right. I oppose them when I think he is wrong.
MILLER: Collins’ repeated use of the word independence is strategic. Nearly one-third of Maine voters are independents, making them the second largest voting bloc after Democrats. And Collins will need a significant number of independent voters to win in November, when many Democrats are expected to turn out, motivated by their anger over Trump policies, with immigration potentially topping that list.
For NPR News, I’m Kevin Miller in Augusta, Maine.
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