Portland Mayor Mark Dion has denied claims that the City agreed to cooperate with federal ICE agents in order to receive an $18 million transportation grant for improvements at the Jetport.
Speculation that the City consented to cooperate with ICE, or the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, in exchange for this funding began after a closed-door council meeting was held on short notice Wednesday night.
Councilors Kate Sykes and Wes Pelletier told the Portland Press Herald that the City decided to sign the funding agreement during this meeting despite the inclusion of a stipulation requiring cooperation with ICE.
In response to reports that the City had agreed to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officials, protesters gathered in Portland on Thursday, carrying sings reading “Immigrants are not criminals, ICE is” and “No ICE in Portland” (despite the undeniable fact that every winter there is plenty of ice even in Maine’s largest city).
Shortly before this protest began, the City announced that Mayor Dion would be holding a press conference later in the afternoon to address the topic.
The City of Portland first accepted the multi-million grant for the Jetport in January. Several months later, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy shared a letter laying out the terms by which grant recipients were expected to comply, including cooperation with ICE agents and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Earlier this summer, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction halting the enforcement of this requirement while the case plays out in court, citing a lack of authority, insufficient specificity, and the absence of a “plausible connection” between transportation funding and cooperation with ICE.
Because Maine was among the twenty states that sued the Trump Administration over this policy, the Transportation Administration is currently blocked requiring that Portland officials cooperate with ICE in order to receive funding from the agency.
Despite this, Councilors Sykes and Pelletier told the Press Herald Wednesday that language mandating cooperation with ICE had still been added to the funding agreement.
During Thursday afternoon’s press conference, Mayor Dion explained that in light of the preliminary injunction issued in June, the Transportation Department added language to the grant agreement “stating explicitly that the decision to take grant money cannot be seen as a legal certification or concession to the immigration enforcement condition.”
This new language was brought to the City’s attention earlier this week, prompting the Council to convene for a closed-door session Wednesday evening.
Dion went on to explain that the combination of the preliminary injunction and the newly added language led to the Council deciding to move forward with its prior acceptance of the grant funds.
“We make this decision understanding that there may exist the potential for further court action to protect our community rights to preserve and protect our transportation resources while not expanding our involvement with federal immigration enforcement practices,” said Dion.
“In fact, we see the best way to challenge the Department’s unlawful attempt to tie the receipt of public transportation dollars to local cooperation with ICE is to accept the grant funds, which we are entitled to,” he said, “and contest any future attempts by federal agencies to compel the City to take any action that we are not legally required to take.”
The content of the mayor’s prepared statement was later posted in full on the City’s website and can be read here.
