Two police departments in Maine and Michigan this week ended contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over staffing shortages, according to local media.
Newsweek reached out to ICE and the police departments for comment.
Why It Matters
The announcements by police in Wells, Maine, and Genesee County, Michigan, come as immigration remains a political flashpoint nationwide. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has more than 1,000 agreements with local law enforcement units across the country amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportations, but the contracts have come under scrutiny, including from advocates of immigrant rights.
Conservatives view ICE as carrying out important immigration enforcement aimed at the removal of undocumented immigrants, especially those with criminal reports, but critics have raised concerns that individuals with no violent records or decades-old convictions have been swept up in the heightened enforcement.
What To Know
The Wells Police Department announced that it has ended its involvement with ICE following backlash from the community, reported news station WMTV.
Chief of Police Jo-Ann Putnam said in a statement reported by the station that she has “consistently maintained that politics and policing should remain separate” but that those “lines have become blurred.”
“Considering recent events over the weekend, and with the safety of Wells residents and visitors as our priority, I have made the decision to withdraw from participation in the 287(g) program with Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” she said.
More than 900 people had signed a petition calling on the department to end the agreement, according to the station.
Police in Genesee County, Michigan—home to the city of Flint—also announced that they would be terminating their contact with ICE due to staffing issues, rather than community concerns, reported local news outlet MILive. The news outlet reported that the department reached an agreement with ICE to aid in deportation efforts in June.
The agreement allowed five local officers in the department to detain people until federal immigration agents could arrest them. However, those officers will be unable to complete the training to do so because of other duties, MILive reported.
“My command staff and I decided it’s best for now to pause this,” Metro Police Authority Chief Matt Bade told the news outlet, saying that it could be reversed in the future.
The decision did not have anything to do with calls from immigrant rights advocates to end the program, he told MILive. Still, groups like the Flint Alliance for Immigrant Rights celebrated the news, writing in a Facebook post that it believes it is “clear that our community’s unified advocacy and pressure played a decisive role in prompting this change by the agency.”
What People Are Saying
Flint Alliance for Immigrant Rights, on Facebook: “Flint has always shown the world that we have the courage to stand up to powerful forces and take bold action to protect the most marginalized among us. It’s up to us to keep pushing our leaders to act, to resist this administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, and defend the rights of our immigrant friends, families, and neighbors in Flint, Genesee County, and beyond.”
ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan, in a September statement: “ICE is not only supercharging our hiring, we are also multiplying partnerships with state and local law enforcement to remove the worst of the worst including murderers, gang members, rapists, terrorists, and pedophiles from our country. Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE launched a new reimbursement program for state and local law enforcement who partner with DHS to make America safe again.”
What Happens Next
Many law enforcement agencies across the country remain partnered with ICE. Intensified immigration enforcement and protests of tactics employed by the Trump administration are also expected to continue.
