Community members request Wells Police terminate contract with ICE

Yahoo

17-04-2025

The Wells Police Department was the first agency in Maine to sign an agreement under the 287(g) program, which permits local officers to arrest people on immigration violations, an authority otherwise reserved for federal agents. (Photo via Wells Police Facebook)
After federal immigration authorities accepted Maine's first police department into an official partnership earlier this month, some community members are now requesting police terminate the contract.
The crux of the rift between the community and police: uncertainty and disagreement over how they expect the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's 287(g) program will operate in practice.
Revived under President Donald Trump's administration to bolster ICE's capacity by deputizing local police officers to detain immigrants, those pushing back on Wells' participation in the program argue it entangles their local police with a federal agency that has been accused of disregarding due process.
Four community members asked the Wells Select Board on Tuesday night to direct the police department to dissolve the agreement, arguing the department should have first consulted the public and raising concern about the program's history of abuse. Before Trump reinstated the program, it was discontinued in 2012 after the discovery of discriminatory practices, including racial profiling.
But Wells police leadership argue the agreement doesn't mean their local agency will adopt ICE's recent approach to arrests. Rather, Wells Police Chief Jo-Ann Putnam told Maine Morning Star she entered into the agreement to take advantage of a training opportunity and streamline work flow.
First Maine police department joins ICE partnership
As first reported by Maine Morning Star, the Wells Police Department was the first — and so far only — agency in Maine to sign an agreement under the 287(g) program, which permits local officers to arrest people on immigration violations, an authority otherwise reserved for federal agents.
Wells' agreement is specifically for 287(g)'s 'task force model,' which ICE describes as a 'force multiplier' to allow law enforcement agencies to enforce limited immigration authority with ICE oversight during their routine police duties. 287(g)'s other two models are focused on investigating people who have already been arrested and booked in local jails.
As of April 16, ICE had signed 456 Memorandums of Agreement for 287(g) programs covering 38 states, with task force agreements with 190 agencies in 23 states, including Wells.
Putnam said ICE has informed her department that the training includes 40 hours of online courses, which the department had yet to begin as of this week. The department submitted to ICE a list of officers eligible to participate in the program, who must have two years of police experience and be a U.S. citizen, which Putnam said is the majority of the department.
Regarding when arrests for immigration violations could begin after that, 'We don't know,' Putnam said. 'We haven't been told when to start.'
The memorandum of understanding ICE signed with Wells Police permits its officers once trained to interrogate any 'person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or remain in the United States' and 'arrest without warrant any alien entering or attempting to unlawfully enter the United States in the officer's presence or view,' among other capabilities otherwise reserved for federal authorities.
But Putnam said when Wells officers start enforcing immigration violations through the agreements, they will only act on existing federal warrants that have had judicial review.
Normally, she said, when local police run a license and discover an existing federal warrant for an immigration offense, they have to wait for federal authorities to make an arrest. The agreement eliminates that redundancy, Putnam said.
'We're not rounding up undocumented people,' said Wells Police Captain Kevin Chabot. 'Wells Police does not do proactive immigration enforcement.'
Putnam said regardless of what the partnership allows, 'We're doing what I'm telling you we're going to do, and that's it.'
Putnam has repeatedly told Maine Morning Star that she hopes Mainers have confidence in their local law enforcement officers who'll be carrying out the work. But a lack of trust in local authorities is not why some are objecting to the ICE agreement.
'It's not a matter of not trusting the chief and her force,' Cheryl Dearman Mills, one of the people who spoke at the select board meeting, told Maine Morning Star. 'As I read the [memorandum of understanding], it raises concerns about control and future entanglement with ICE.'
The memorandum also states that local police have the authority to serve and execute warrants of arrest for immigration violations, issue immigration detainers and prepare charging documents.
Others who called for the select board to terminate the ICE agreement similarly said their concern was with local police formalizing a relationship with an agency that appears, at times, to be acting outside of the law.
'Chief Putnam was looking at this contract primarily with a local focus, separate from the larger picture of ICE's current tactics of enforcement and deportation,' Wells resident Mary Marra told the select board. 'And I was seeing this agreement primarily from a broader focus and how ICE's questionable and sometimes illegitimate enforcement reflects very poorly on our town.'
For example, Marra pointed to masked immigration officers detaining Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk for allegedly supporting Hamas by co-authoring an op-ed calling for the school to divest from companies with ties to Israel, as well as the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.
This week in Florida, a U.S.-born citizen was arrested for entering the state as an 'unauthorized alien.' His mother and a community advocate showed his birth certificate during a hearing, but the judge said she had no authority to release him, as reported by Maine Morning Star's sister outlet the Florida Phoenix.
'This is Wells Police acting as ICE agents in certain situations and I am extremely uncomfortable with what ICE is doing,' said another Wells resident, Peg Duddy, who is calling for the termination of the ICE contract.
Duddy and others have met on-on-one with Putnam, as well as attended meetings with the chief and her leadership team, including one hosted by the Wells Democratic Town Committee Wednesday night.
They don't want ICE in their town. This is one way of hopefully keeping them out of town.
– Jo-Ann Putnam, Wells Police Chief
'They don't want ICE in their town,' Putnam said of attendees after the meeting. 'This is one way of hopefully keeping them out of town.'
Duddy and Dearman Mills told Maine Morning Star that the meeting did not change their opposition and that they will continue to push for the contract to be terminated. More immediately, they're requesting at minimum a 90-day pause, which they said would afford time to clarify the work Wells Police will engage in through the agreement.
'Also to evaluate where the national picture is in 90 days,' Duddy said, 'because this is not in isolation from that.'
Chair of the Wells Select Board John MacLeod III did not respond to a request for comment about the community members' requests.
Putnam said she's having meetings with various groups — places of worship, the local Chamber of Commerce, businesses who employ immigrants on work visas — to answer questions about the ICE agreement but said she's not reconsidering it in light of pushback from some community members. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, she said.
Data posted on the ICE website listed the Monmouth Winthrop Police Department, a combination of departments that serve central Maine communities, with a pending application earlier this month but ICE has since removed the department from that list and also does not indicate an agreement has been signed. ICE, Monmouth Winthrop Police Chief Paul Ferland and Lieutenant Dana Wessling did not respond to requests for comment regarding whether the application was terminated and why.
Such agreements could face legal hurdles as Democrats in the Maine Legislature proposed legislation to prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies or officers from entering into contracts with federal immigration enforcement authorities. The bill has yet to have a public hearing.
Aside from 287(g) agreements, an uptick in immigration detentions have revealed increased federal operations in Maine. Cumberland County Jail in Portland had 122 people detained under ICE orders last month, according to data Maine Morning Star obtained through a Freedom of Access Act request.
According to attorneys, while some of these people were arrested in the state, the majority appear to be transferred from other states and are quickly transferred out too, signaling that federal authorities are using Maine as a tool in its 'mass deportation' goal.
'It's crucial for Maine's people to know how their public officials may be supporting federal immigration enforcement, which often violates people's constitutional rights,' ACLU of Maine Staff Attorney Anahita Sotoohi said in a statement on Thursday, after the organization filed information requests seeking a more comprehensive picture of local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
'Abuses of power and attacks on due process threaten all people, regardless of immigration status,' Sotoohi said. 'When due process is undermined for some, all people are at risk as power is consolidated and our system of checks and balances is dismantled.'
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