‘Abolish ICE? Hell Yeah…’: Maine Democrats Unload on Trump at Vigil for ICE Shooting Victim

So first, I think it's really important that we be centered in what is happening and why we are here. I think it is really important to say their names. I think it is really important, it's really important to remember that this is about our neighbors. So when I was growing up in Hancock, I think about that girl growing up outside of Ellsworth in a district that's still voting Republican, and I would have been scared to say Johan, Sebastian, Duran, Guerrero. But you know what, if you say his name, there's no wrong way to say it. So if you say Johan, or Johan, or however you say it, it's important that you remember it. So can you join me? Johan, Johan, Johan, Johan. And when you go home tonight, write it down. And if you, and if I'm saying it a different way than his mother, or his three-year-old daughter, or the folks that lived across the street from him, the nurse I met yesterday in Biddeford said it was her first protest. I kind of recognize that in myself because I said, you know, my first protest was when I was an organizer in my 20s. I was at the ACLU. Started in January of 2003. One of the first things they had us work on was trying to stop Congress from changing the structure of what they called back then the INS. Because here's the deal. Most people agree that we need to have laws and rules, right? That's what we have in our communities. So of course most people agree that we need laws and rules. That's what binds us together, is the rule of law. And there, at that time, they decided they were going to turn INS into ICE. And we, when I was a baby organizer, were voices in a void saying, don't do it. If you do that, it leads us down a dangerous road. We saw this day, and this morning, and this is news I just got because I've been working all day trying to support the community. Because this isn't about politics. This isn't about politics. This is about using the power you have to stand up for the people you love. It's not about performance. It's not about whether you're there or here or everywhere. It's about if you're there where you need to be when no one is watching. It's about if you see what's coming before it happens. It's about whether you have the courage to say the words, but more importantly, do the things. In January, we knew what was happening around the country, some of us. And we knew that ICE was here in Maine, and we heard rumors that they were about to surge. And an application came in from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol for undercover license plates. And I denied it. Here's the other part of the story that you don't know. I didn't send out a press release on a Friday. The Fed sent out a press release after closing business on a Friday night. There was a snowstorm on Saturday of some sort. I won't say it was a storm. It was a lot of snow. I still did a house party. I was out in the road in the snow, and I got some frantic texts from my staff. What do you want to say to the media about what you did yesterday? And I was like, oh, let me think about that. And I did. I talked to all the media. And I said, we do not have undercover police in our democracy. Right? That's what made the news. And I'll keep saying it. And you know, on CNN Friday night, they asked me, so are you going to abolish ICE? And I said, hell yeah. And I was angry. Right? But here's what I meant. And here's what's important. And here's what I know. I'm one of the few people that, let me rephrase, as a society, we get so caught up in the noise of the moment that we forget how we got here. And so what I am talking about when I say those words that are the, that are what are on some of your signs, along with stop ICE, ICE out, which I love. It's uniquely Maine. It's like, you know, right? Fair. It's about Johan, not my campaign. But it's also about this. It's also about how we, ICE is broken. ICE is broken. The guys that they're deploying, the guys that killed a man this morning in St. Augustine, the 12th ICE-involved killing since Trump took office, the 12th ICE or U.S. Custom Borders Patrol-involved killing since Trump took office. ICE, those guys, those dogs, those people that killed Johan yesterday on that video that some of us have just started to have to see, they couldn't get, they couldn't, they couldn't pass the test to be law enforcement here. They wouldn't qualify to work for the Sheriff's Department or Lewiston Police Department. They're thugs. That agency is broken. And we need to go back to a time where the rule of law united all of us, regardless of the politics, regardless of who we are, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Christians, Muslims, Jewish folks, agnostic folks. And I'm going to stop there. But what I want to say is, the young lady said, I said it wrong, right? It's Johan, not Johan. But you know what? This is not a moment for judging each other. This is not a moment for anger. This is a moment for accepting that each of us are scared and grieving and fighting and moving forward in our own ways and have something to give. And so I ask you tonight, don't be worried about, clearly, the Secretary of State just said Johan instead of Johan. Don't worry about that. You say his name because his family, his partner, his daughter, his neighbors that lived on the street, who had kids with blue pajamas, just like his daughter was wearing yesterday morning, they might have said his name wrong once or twice, too. That guy in the laundromat he used to go to, or the store owner who said, yeah, I know that guy, but I was scared to identify himself because he was scared of ice himself. They might have said Johan, Johan's name wrong. But they said his name, they treated him like the neighbor, the meaner, the person that they saw. So let's not be scared to say it wrong Let's show up. Let's have the courage to do what we think matters. And before I go, Safiya Khalid has been targeted. The mosque has been targeted with folks taking photos, a young boy taking photos. What I want to say is we have to show up for our neighbors. Okay, thank you. I woke up yesterday morning to the news that so many of us did, and I felt despair, anger. I hugged my daughter Ella a little closer. But one emotion I did not have yesterday morning was shock, because this was preventable. Johan did not need to die like this. And for so many, I'm sure in out in the park today, we have been demonstrating and protesting about this violence and this terrorization of our streets for over a year in the dead of winter. But I think so many of us have stories about what ice invasion of our state has looked like. A year ago, one of our neighbors was abducted. He had run a yellow traffic light, had no criminal record, married to a U.S. citizen, three-year-old daughter, farm worker, had been here for 10 years. And he was pulled over for a traffic light and turned over to ice. And his wife did not know where he was for two days. She then found out she got a call from the hospital in Bangor that her husband was there. He had been detained by ice and attempted to take his own life. She, in hysterics, went up. She was then arrested and detained because they said she was threatening ice. Now, people want to know why was what happened yesterday preventable? Well, it was a product of fear. This is what it looks like to have a community that is living in fear. When somebody flees like that, that is because they are there with their three-year-old daughter. And even if they're here legally, even if they're not breaking the law, they still live in fear. And we will not be safe in a community without fear until ice gets out of Bangor. The other thing that makes something like the tragedy yesterday possible is a president who says there will be no accountability if you break the law on my behalf. If you break the law, if you kill your fellow citizens, if it is in the pursuit of my agenda, you don't break the law, I will take care of you. And anybody that thought that was not the case, the first day that President Donald Trump was in office, he pardoned 1,600 January 6th insurrectionists. He said, I don't care if you commit violence against police officers. I don't care if you try to overturn a free and fair election. If it's for me, I will take care of you. And when you're in a situation where an ICE agent feels at liberty to shoot an innocent person in a car, that's because they do not believe that they will face any accountability. And if any of us in Maine needed a reminder after this very difficult week that we have had, that Susan Collins should no longer be our senator, we got it yesterday. Susan Collins, since ICE has invaded our state, since ICE has invaded our state, she has given us words of concern many times. She's very worried about what's going on in the streets of Lewiston. But every time she has had the power to stop it, she does not. She does not. And there are too many times when she has done this when it comes to ICE, but just you are the United States senator with so much power over the spending of our government. You tell us all the time you were supposed to be credited with so much money, but somehow you do not have the power to stop the funding of ICE. No more. No more. And I just want to close with this, which is we need a senator that is going to take care of our state, that's going to care and protect our neighbors. And that means abolishing ICE, creating a law-enforcing agency that is there to actually protect and serve us. And the ICE officers who had committed this murder, and we should be clear about what this was, it was a murder. They should be prosecuted. But I want to close with this, which is that we are in despair. We have a huge task in front of us as a state, but we've got to hold on to hope. And one of my favorite quotes about hope is St. Augustine, that hope has two beautiful daughters. One is anger at the way things are, and we have a lot of anger at the way things are. But the second is courage, the courage and determination to make things better. And we need to hold on to courage because we all have a lot of anger, but we also need to keep hope, but we've got to have the courage to deliver on it. Our state is depending on us. Thank you so much.