Maine’s senate race is undergoing upheaval as Donald Trump and his administration put a thumb on the scale in a manner that could cost one of the most senior Republicans in Congress their seat.
Sen. Susan Collins, a five-term Republican, is hoping to once again secure victory for her party and help them protect the majority in the upper chamber this fall. Typically, she’d be doing so in her usual fashion: As a maverick but reliably red centrist Republican known for breaking with her party on some issues but generally remaining a loyal member of the Senate GOP caucus.
This year, however, things are different. After spurning the president on a War Powers resolution meant to constrain further hostilities with Venezuela, Collins finds herself running with Trump’s anti-endorsement: He urged his Republican voters to leave Collins and four other GOP senators at the altar this election season and beyond, in a Truth Social post. Days after the Senate GOP leader insisted he didn’t mean it, Trump doubled down, calling her a “disaster”.
And this week, Homeland Security officials confirmed that a surge of ICE operations will soon begin in Collins’s home state — provoking a furious response from her two declared Democratic opponents, one of whom is the state’s current governor, Janet Mills.
Dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day”, it will target Maine’s Somali-American community based largely in Lewiston, according to CBS News, as well as other locations in the state where the administration says undocumented immigrants from other African nations are located. It follows the Trump administration and the president leaning into a wave of targeted enforcement against Minnesota’s Somali-American community and Trump’s own heavy criticism of Somali-Americans, which has been called overtly racist by Democrats. A DHS official who spoke to Fox News said that the administration wanted to arrest 1,400 people in the state.
Across the country, a larger-scale ICE surge in Minneapolis has become the site of rising tensions and angry demonstrations after an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in her car, Renee Good, during a confrontation on a street. Thousands of people have begun protesting the ICE presence, including in Maine.
On Thursday, both Mills and Collins’s Democratic-caucusing independent colleague in the U.S. Senate, Angus King, briefed reporters in Portland, Maine, about the ICE surge. Both raised concerns about reports of an ICE memo supposedly rationalizing agents entering homes and businesses without warrants to detain suspected targets for immigration enforcement. Collins was conspicuously absent and has been since the enforcement surge was announced.
Mills said that she was also concerned that the surge would not target individuals with criminal backgrounds, and would instead involve broad sweeps to pick up anyone with problems in their immigration background.
"We take allegations of criminal activity seriously, no matter who the person is. I don't sense that there's any greater incidence of crime among non-citizens than there is among citizens; in fact, I think probably the opposite," Mills said at a news conference. "But that's not what we're hearing about.”
King issued a forceful statement on Wednesday, condemning what he called “the most dangerous assault on our economy, our democratic system, and our people since the Civil War,” perpetrated (he said) by the White House. He pledged to vote against ICE funding once it reaches the Senate.
Collins also released a statement with a notable amount of nuance to it on Wednesday, her first on the situation since telling HuffPost a week ago that she didn’t “see the rationale for a large number of ICE agents to come in.”
“There are people in Maine and elsewhere who have entered this country illegally and who have engaged in criminal activity. They could be subject to arrest and deportation pursuant to the laws of the United States, and people who are exercising the right to peacefully gather and protest their government should be careful not to interfere with law enforcement efforts while doing so,” said the senator.
“I have advocated for providing body cameras and de-escalation training for ICE personnel. At this time of heightened tensions, these steps could help improve trust, accountability, and safety,” Collins went on. “Our proposed funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security includes $20 million for body cameras and $2 million for de-escalation training, which could help protect both ICE agents and the general public. I hope that Congress will adopt these measures quickly.”
As a centrist Republican, Collins has always been in a tough spot — one that grew immeasurably tougher under the rise of Donald Trump. But before now, Republican leaders and Trump himself have always been willing to give her some slack on the rope to work outside of the party lines. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said that Collins is the “only” Republican who can win in the state, and the Senate Leadership Fund (Thune’s Senate GOP campaign PAC) said this week that it is dumping $42m into Collins’s race to boost her, meaning that Washington has far from given up her seat.
She’ll be running against powerful anti-Trump headwinds in her home state, where, according to an Economist/YouGov tracking poll, the president’s net approval rating is more than 18 points underwater.
And Donald Trump has made very, very clear in recent days that, despite Thune’s insistence to the direct contrary, he actually does not care if Collins wins her seat again this year. His ICE raids in her home state, weeks after a tough vote that comforted Democrats with her drift from GOP doctrine, signal that the president is completely fine with centering an uncomfortable national fight in Collins’s backyard, and giving her opponents ammunition at a very bad time.
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