After a federal immigration officer fatally shot a man in Maine this week, the state’s major Democratic Senate candidates have embraced a once-fringe position: abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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The leftward shift shows how the contenders, competing in a fast-paced contest to replace Graham Platner as the nominee, are adopting the spirit of his aggressive campaign, which electrified Maine Democrats before he dropped out because of a sexual assault allegation, which he denied.
The candidates are presenting themselves as fighters in Platner’s mold in their responses to the shooting. And they are invoking the death in their case for ousting longtime Sen. Susan Collins (R), criticizing her previous votes funding ICE and inability to rein in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
An ICE officer fatally shot 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in the small city of Biddeford in an operation in which he was not the intended target, according to Sen. Angus King (I-Maine).
Several front-runners in the race, including Nirav Shah, Troy Jackson and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, rushed to Biddeford to join an anti-ICE rally hours after the shooting.
Jackson, a favorite of liberal Platner supporters, marched to Collins’s office afterward. Shah, who is pivoting to the left after being perceived as moderate during his unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign, raised money for a mutual aid group for immigrants and named abolishing ICE when asked in a debate for Platner’s best idea. Bellows and Jordan Wood, an unsuccessful congressional candidate, attended a vigil for Durán Guerrero.
Asked in a Thursday debate how they would reform ICE, the leading candidates also described it as an agency beyond saving. Some of the candidates called for abolishing ICE for the first time after the shooting, including Shah, the former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Maine Beer Company co-founder Dan Kleban.
Shah, the candidate who has posted the most about the shooting on social media, described ICE in an interview as a “rogue agency” and said he has long supported abolishing it, although he hasn’t shared that view publicly. He said his identity as the son of immigrants from India drives him to be more aggressive on the issue.
Democrats will pick their Senate candidate at July 25 nominating convention featuring 601 voting delegates. After Platner decisively won the primary, the contenders to succeed him have sought to distance themselves from him as a scandal-tainted candidate while echoing his style and populist platform, including a call to abolish ICE.
With few differences among their immigration agendas, the Democratic Senate hopefuls are instead distinguishing themselves in how they carry their message and attack Collins on the issue.
At a rally in Scarborough the day after the shooting, Jackson vowed he would deliver on abolishing the immigration agency.
“We’re going to do something to get rid of ICE,” said Jackson, a former state Senate president and the closest ideological successor to Platner. “We’re going to do something to get rid of the people that support them.”
At a Tuesday vigil in Lewiston, Bellows, who like Jackson ran as a liberal in the gubernatorial primary, touted her past opposition to ICE even as a few hecklers criticized her for mispronouncing “Johan” and focusing too heavily on her campaign. She organized to try to stop ICE’s creation in the early 2000s, she said, and in January denied a government request for immigration officers to use undercover license plates.
“I remember a day when the thugs weren’t in the government and they didn’t have arms,” Bellows said about ICE in the debate.
While Bellows has called for ICE’s abolition, she tends to avoid the phrase “abolish ICE,” instead often saying “ICE out.” She posted on X after the shooting, “It’s time to get ICE off our streets.”
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Kleban, one of the candidates perceived to be more moderate, first called for the agency’s abolition on Tuesday, though on Monday and earlier in the year he’d said it should be reformed and held accountable. He said that the shooting convinced him ICE is “beyond redemption” but stressed that the United States needs “a real law enforcement agency” to patrol the border and enforce immigration laws. work as border patrol and immigration enforcement agents.
Collins has defended ICE.
“It’s unfortunate that Democrats who are desperate to be appointed to run for the Senate are using a tragedy to further their political aspirations,” Collins said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Abolishing ICE would make America less safe. Anyone calling for abolishing ICE is calling for the agency to cease critical efforts to combat human trafficking, child exploitation, forced labor and international drug smuggling.”
“Abolish ICE” was once a rallying cry for liberal activists during the first Trump administration, but many Democratic officeholders and candidates were reluctant to go that far and alienate moderate voters.
Many Democratic Party strategists have worried the perception that the party is too lax on immigration helped Trump win the 2024 presidential race and could haunt the party in future elections, with the slogan “Abolish ICE” drawing particular scrutiny.
But former Democratic Rep. Steve Israel, who once led the House Democrats’ campaign arm and has been critical of the slogan, said that it’s “understandable” for the candidates to call for the agency’s abolition after the shooting. The eventual nominee might moderate their stance to appeal to a general election audience after the primary, and the election will likely be a referendum on Trump and the economy rather than focusing on the nominee’s statements on immigration, he said.
The abolitionist stance has again gained popularity because of widespread criticism of federal immigration enforcement tactics during Trump’s second term, including the killings of U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Shah said the position would not hurt Democrats in a general election against Collins.
“It is something that right now Americans are coming around to,” he said. “I ask folks to think about the following question: How many more people on American soil must be gunned down at the hands of rogue federal agents like ICE before we all agree that it is time to abolish ICE?”
After the shooting, Collins called in a social media post for a “full and impartial investigation of what happened.” The following day, she said that she urged Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops” — such as that which led to Monday’s shooting.
Though most vehicle stops were temporarily paused, the Department of Homeland Security reversed its decision Wednesday after Trump defended traffic stops as one of the “most important and effective Crime Fighting tools” in a post on Truth Social.
Collins, who has cultivated a moderate image, chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee overseeing government spending and voted with Republicans this year to give ICE and Customs and Border Protection $70 billion in new funding. She had previously pushed to include funding for body cameras and de-escalation training.
To Democrats seeking to face Collins, her legislative record funding ICE is an electoral liability.
“She’s the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, and she likes to tell people that quite often — but what’s the point … if you’re not going to use that power?” Kleban said in an interview. “They appropriated money again to ICE after the murder of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, with no condition. She’s got to answer for that.”
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