Maine Democrat Senate candidate Troy Jackson said Thursday he would cut off funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and move its duties to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), calling the agency unreformable during a WMTW debate against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).
Jackson, a logger from Allagash and former Maine Senate president, made the comments when a moderator asked whether Congress should keep funding ICE and what conditions he would attach. The challenger, who replaced Graham Platner as the party’s nominee in July, said the agency could not be fixed and pointed to the July fatal shooting of a man in Biddeford by an ICE agent.
“This agency is so rogue that I don’t know that it can be reformed,” Jackson said. “But I know for a fact that people are always going to know ICE as an outfit that has murdered at least four people here in this country, and that that is not law enforcement”:
If I had the opportunity, I would put that law enforcement in Customs and Border Patrol. They used to do, you know, sex trafficking work, drug smuggling, and all that. And people saw them as legitimate law enforcement. But what we have right now is not legitimate law enforcement, and I would cut the funding off for them.
Collins, seeking a sixth term, rejected the call to eliminate the agency and noted Jackson’s position was not new.
“We need to reform ICE further. There’s no doubt about that,” the Appropriations chair said. “But we cannot completely abolish ICE, as Troy has called for many times. ICE is responsible for deporting violent criminals, such as the member of the Venezuelan cartel that killed the 22-year-old nursing student. It’s responsible for investigating child exploitation, drug smuggling, international cartels, and financial crimes, pornography schemes. Do we really want to make the country less safe?”
Collins said she secured $20 million for body-worn cameras and argued the footage requirement would bring accountability. Jackson argued the cameras came without guardrails, claiming the tapes do not have to be released “unless it’s in the best interest of ICE.”
Jackson is not alone among Maine Democrats in targeting the agency. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, before exiting the Senate race, told CNN in July that Democrats needed to beat Collins “because we do need to abolish ICE.”
The Biddeford man, identified by the Maine Attorney General’s Office as 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero of Colombia, had a final order of removal. The agents were not wearing body cameras.