Ella D. Tabasky is an organizer with No ICE for ME, a collective of community members, faith leaders, educators and other advocates who have been working to end Cumberland County’s collaboration with ICE. She lives in Brunswick.

We’re hearing devastating stories in Maine and across the country as ICE and Border Patrol continue their inhumane, racist and violent campaign of detention and deportation. The fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis make the danger of this moment even more urgent.

But, make no mistake, Black and brown people have been losing their lives to ICE for years. What feels newly shocking to some has long been routine for others. This violence is not new; it is systemic.

Cumberland County and Sheriff Kevin Joyce have been enabling this violence. In 2025, immigration detentions at the Cumberland County Jail skyrocketed, made possible by the county’s contract with ICE, via an agreement with the U.S. Marshal Service. The jail became a central part of ICE’s detention and deportation machinery, with people being sent from all over New England to be caged in Portland.

According to data provided to us by the county, about two-thirds of the immigration detainees at the jail were not from Maine. This expansion did not happen because the public demanded it, but because officials treated cooperation with ICE as administrative “business as usual.”

Despite sustained community pressure late last year, the county refused to end its contract with ICE.

In January 2026, ICE at least temporarily removed immigration detainees from the jail. But while the contract with ICE is still in place, ICE is permitted to use the jail as a detention facility whenever it wants.

At the same time, the sheriff has not announced a change to his policy of cooperation with ICE, which has included encouraging officers to call ICE during routine traffic stops and working with ICE to facilitate the abductions of people released from the jail. The county may not even protect its own employees. Even after two corrections officers were abducted by ICE, the county agreed to comply with ICE’s request to turn over employment information about all jail employees and contractors so that ICE could identify more people to arrest.

Rather than drawing a line, members of county leadership doubled down, revealing just how far they are willing to go to preserve cooperation with ICE — even as that cooperation helps ICE target county workers.

Local jails like the Cumberland County Jail (and other county jails in Maine) play a crucial role in ICE’s mass deportation agenda. According to a report by Prison Policy Institute at the end of 2025, ICE was arresting as many as 500 people per day at jails and other local facilities. And, here in Maine specifically, about a quarter of the ICE arrests between January 2025 and October 2025 occurred at state and local facilities, with nearly 30 happening at the Cumberland County Jail alone. Those arrests are made possible only through the jail’s cooperation.

The county has continued its contract even though the Department of Homeland Security went months without making relevant payments and still has not paid what it owes in full. This is not a stable partnership; it is a failing arrangement propped up by political inertia. In the business world, failure to pay would result in a contract being terminated — not the case in Cumberland County.

On Feb. 17, county commissioners met and again chose to maintain the county’s relationship with ICE, despite clear and repeated calls from constituents to end it. After everything our community experienced during the recent ICE surge and beyond, it is shocking that some elected officials see any partnership as acceptable.

No ICE for ME will continue pressing the county to change course, and we invite the public to stand with us. It is long past time to end our complicity in ICE’s violence.