At a Portland town hall event Monday evening hosted by a collection of progressive nonprofit organizations, a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maine said that he will be urging the State Legislature to pass laws protecting illegal immigrants from deportation, and compared federal immigration authorities to Nazis in 1930s Germany.
The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (MIRC) hosted the town hall event, entitled “Centering and Restoring The Community: Elections 2024,” at the Portland Public Library.
Speaking on the panel was Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, State Rep. Deqa Dhalac (D-South Portland), EqualityMaine Executive Director Gia Drew, and Maine ACLU policy counsel Michael Kebede.
“We’re here because there is a very consequential federal election happening in just a couple of months,” Kebede opened his remarks. “Over the last 20 years, the federal government has transformed from what it used to be into a source of moral pain, a source of regressivism.”
Kebede said that progressive activists, who in the past thought of the U.S. Supreme Court as an ally and “source of progressive laws, progressive jurisprudence,” have, since the first term of President Donald Trump, “had to look elsewhere for defense of basic rights and basic liberties.”
Former President Trump has made a hardline stance on illegal immigration and executing mass deportations a key part of his 2024 campaign platform, vowing that in a second term he would launch “the largest deportation in the history of our country.”
Trump’s vow has come in response to an unprecedented level of foreign nationals entering the U.S. illegally.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) data, encounters with illegal border-crossers increased from 1.9 million in 2021 to 3.2 million in 2023.
For comparison, DHS reported just 310,531 encounters in 2017 and 404,142 encounters in 2018.
Trump has also come under fire for claiming during the recent presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs — the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
On the topic of immigration, Kebede pointed to an ordinance in the City of Portland that prohibits city employees and police officers from inquiring into the immigration status of any person, a policy that was passed amid what he called “widespread racial profiling” by the federal government after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The morning of the 9-11 attacks, two of the most notorious terrorists involved in the plot — Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari — flew out of Portland International Jetport before boarding planes in Boston.
[RELATED: City of Portland Claims Migrant Crisis an “Act of God”…]
Kebede also cited an executive order issued in 2004 by then-Gov. John Baldacci (D) that established a similar policy at the state level, barring state employees, including law enforcement, from inquiring about the immigration status of individuals applying for state services, like welfare benefits or MaineCare.
“What this did was it prevented smooth cooperation between the state and the federal government in deportation efforts,” Kebede said. “It threw sand in the deportation machine, and unfortunately, the 2004 Governor Baldacci executive order was the very first thing, on his very first day, that Governor LePage repealed.”
The Maine ALCU lawyer expressed disappointment that despite Democratic control of the State Senate, House and governorship, there has not been a similar measure passed to ban state workers from “cooperating in deportation efforts.”
“And so, one thing the ACLU hopes to see and will work for, and I hope all of you here will be interested in working toward, is trying to prevent state cooperation with all of the federal government’s deportation efforts,” Kebede said.
Kebede claimed that in “many cases” illegal immigrants die after they are deported back to their home country, saying that one of the reasons migrants come to the U.S. is because they are “afraid to continue living where they live for political reasons, for family reasons, maybe they’re trans.”
In cases when a migrant is in the U.S. illegally, Kebede argued that the State of Maine and local municipalities should “stop cooperating with the federal government” and say “we will not help you deport our neighbors.”
Additionally, Kebede cited the so-called “shield law” regarding transgender medical procedures and abortions, passed by the Maine Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Janet Mills this April, as an example of a policy the Maine ACLU hopes to expand upon.
[RELATED: GOP AGs Threaten Maine Over “totalitarian” Child Sex-Change Bill…]
“That shield law can be expanded to encompass other things that are illegal in other states but are legal in Maine,” Kebede said. “We can prohibit police, for instance, from cooperating with out of state prosecutors to help the prosecution of people.”
“We have to pass laws — that’s the only thing that’ll put a barrier between federal deportation efforts, federal persecution efforts, the prosecution of people by out of state actors and people in pain,” he added.
According to the Maine ACLU website, Kebede joined the organization after working as a volunteer on the group’s campaign to legalize non-citizen voting in Portland’s local elections.
Arguing in favor of the importance of migrant workers in the state’s economy, Kebede said that Maine is experiencing a “massive demographic crisis” and a workforce shortage that won’t “be solved by native-born Mainers or local people having lots of children.”
[RELATED: Mills Admin, Nonprofits, and Big Biz Back New Migrant Resettlement Agency for Maine…]
Kebede claimed that if all of the illegal immigrants were deported from the U.S., the economy would “crash and burn” and “create a global recession.”
The Maine ACLU policy counsel labeled supporters of deportation of illegal immigrants as belonging to “vile political communities,” drawing a comparison between U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the Nazi regime in 1930s Germany.
“There’s also the moral consequence of belonging to vile political communities, which I don’t think anyone one of us wants to belong to,” he said. “When history books write about us and we’re asked, ‘what were you doing when the ICE officers marched into businesses, marched into courthouses, marched into schools and took children, took their parents, and sent them back to countries where the best you can hope for is a meager survival, but in some cases where they died, what were you doing?'”
“That kind of question was asked of many Germans who lived in the 1930s, and I would hope some of them are ashamed to say, ‘I was doing nothing, I was being entertained, and I was living a lovely life,'” he added. “That’s, I feel, what’s at stake for someone who isn’t personally or physically harmed, or doesn’t risk any kind of personal thing under the forces of neo-fascism in the United States.”
According to federal data, more illegal immigrants were deported during President Barack Obama’s time in office than under either President George W. Bush or President Donald Trump. According to the data, the U.S. processed roughly 2 million deportations under Bush, more than 3 million under Obama, and less than 1 million under Trump, though the Trump administration numbers were likely skewed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="30977 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=30977">17 Comments
This is for all you MUD LOVERS…. Import the 3rd World ,Become the 3rd World …. The truth Hurts … Now Leave !
dealing with foreign invaders now qualifies as nazi.
Germany was not overrun with foreigners, nazis removed Germans. If ICE deported Americans the comparison might make sense but this is just dribble. Agitators are so stupid now they’ll say any word that invokes a response, like a chicken pressing a button for seed.
Has he paid off his student loan?
So the fascist brownshirts are calling us nazis.
It s Wednesday, and Dems project their own vile behavior onto others.
Next?
Everyone agrees that the presence of so many so-called “new Mainers” makes the housing shortage in the state much more troublesome than if these people were absent from Maine. Kebede should take a first step and take some of these “new Mainers” into his own home. Or…perhaps he considers it more virtuous to use other people’s (that is, the taxpayers’) money to cover the costs his new “neighbors” inflict upon the state.
So the MCLU is advocating for State’s rights?
So much for the left toning down their rhetoric,…..
Mainers are you sick and tired of this yet? Are you entertained with how the Communists are destroying your state?
If ever there were a perfect example of “the enemy within” (especially the ACLU), this is it. Deport every single illegal alien. If they want to return, they must demonstrate that they will contribute to and not be a financial drain on the state or country. Above all, they MUST do it through LEGAL channels!
They should just drop The A and L from the name as they no long support Americans nor our liberties.
WHO IS DRIVING OUR BUS ?
Bellows , Dhalac, Drew , and Kebede . Research these four people !
Kebede tried to prevent us from removing our crime infested homeless camps .
Bellows tried to take Donald Trump off the state ballot .
What can you say about Drew that hasn’t been said before ? Wow !
Dhalac is another Somali ( like Ilhan Omar ) who knows better where “ Maine “ needs to go .
We are purposely being driven off a cliff by these “ New Mainers “ and everyone is smiling and waving a stupid new flag with a pine tree and a star . We are screwed .
Just imagine how fucked our life will be if Kamala Harris wins the election !
The only nazis here is the aclu
They aren’t “immigrants” They are invaders, nothing more, nothing less. Refusing to deport them.is nothing short of treason. MAGA/MAHA
How in the world do you pass a law, for breaking the law in the first place!? How utterly stupid!
ACLU, and the rest of the looney leftists in this state need to go…If you do not uphold your oath of office, you have no place in this Republic
I encourage all Dems to continue using the Nazi rhetoric for the next 4 years. You’ll never hold public office again.
The Constitution is the highest law of the land. Even separate States have to agree with the Constitution and follow the highest law of the land.
Article 4, Section 4. – “The United States shall guaranteed to every state in this union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on Application of the Legislature or the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.“
I say jail anyone that hinders ICE from performing their duties. To hell with the leftist,Communist “useful idiots!”
Remember, even the DemoRATS have stated that no one is above the law. Well, except Hunter, the “big guy” and the rest of the Jobama minions.