The Wells Police Department has taken steps to become the first Maine agency to establish a formal partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which could draw the liberal-leaning town into a debate over whether local police should work with those carrying out President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.
The Wells department submitted an application last week to enter into a “task force” agreement with ICE that would authorize local officers to enforce some federal immigration laws during their regular patrol duties, according to ICE’s website.
The decision came just days after a Democratic state lawmaker submitted legislation that would ban Maine police departments from partnering with the federal agency, which has solicited local law enforcement agencies to help conduct what the Trump has promised to be the country’s largest deportation campaign in history. The federal government started contacting Maine police agencies earlier this winter asking to form voluntary partnerships but as of last week, none had accepted the offer.
Wells Police Chief Jo-Ann Putnam said her department’s recent decision to partner with ICE was not motivated by a desire to aid Trump’s priorities. She views it as a way to save officers time when they encounter someone with a federal arrest warrant, she said in an interview Tuesday.
“What prompted it is it gives law enforcement another tool in the toolbelt to act and enforce laws, to protect citizens of the town and state,” she said. “And we always like to work with state and federal partners, no matter who they are.”
Right now, police officers in Wells have to wait for ICE agents to show up when they make a traffic stop and discover the driver has a federal arrest warrant, Putnam said.
This doesn’t happen often, but the officer can sometimes wait hours. Contracting with ICE would allow the Wells police to detain the person and get back to regular duties faster, Putnam said.
The chief was unaware of the bill to ban ICE contracts and declined to comment on it. But she brushed aside questions about whether the contract would have the department work more closely with the federal government to advance its immigration priorities. The deal would also provide her officers good training opportunities, she said.
Others may see the partnership as more fraught than the chief does. Some Mainers have expressed alarm at how federal immigration authorities have operated in the state since Trump’s inauguration, or voiced that local police should not be using their resources to aid the federal government.
Putnam reiterated that her department would not take on any “proactive” immigration enforcement duties.
“We are not going out and knocking on doors,” Putnam said. “We are not going out looking for who is supposed to be here, who isn’t. It’s [for] federal warrants.”
Wells, a coastal York County town that former Vice President Kamala Harris won handily in November, joins a growing list of police departments to contract with ICE, the majority of which are from conservative states, according to a list on the agency’s website.
The agreements are based on the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which allows the federal government to delegate state and local police the power to perform certain duties under the oversight of ICE.
Putnam submitted her department’s application after she received an email earlier in the year advertising the opportunity and discussing the idea with Wells’ town manager, she said. She has not yet heard back about its status.
A fact sheet on the task force model, described as a “force multiplier” for enforcing federal immigration law, states that participating local agencies complete a 40-hour online course on federal immigration law during the application process.
The department’s application is based on a memorandum similar to one between ICE and Gorham, New Hampshire, she said, and that she believes is similar to an example “task force” agreement posted on the federal government’s website.
The example agreement includes language that, for example, empowers local police to arrest a person who is or believed to be in the U.S. illegally without a warrant, transport people who have violated federal immigration laws to ICE-approved detention facilities, and serve arrest warrants for immigration violations.
Reporter Callie Ferguson can be reached at cferguson@bangordailynews.com.
