1. United States
2. Maine
3. Letter

ICE is terrorising our communities; they are using excessive force. They are denying habeas corpus. They are holding detainees in conditions that the Geneva convention forbids for enemy combatants. They are disappearing our neighbors. They are tearing apart families. They kidnapping law-abiding employees who are essential to core businesses. They are using racial profiling. Somewhere a child is hiding an an attic like Anne Frank writing: terrible things are happening in the streets. We know that they take people for bounty, to reach targets, that they have tased pregnant women, zip tied a peaceful non verbal autistic man, assaulted an 80-year old so violently that he needed hospitalisation. More deaths have occurred in ICE-custody than ever before. ICE has become a Gestapo with concentration camps. And the people they detain? The vast majority are NOT felons or criminals, no, they are asylum seekers, green card holders, young DACAs. Even if there is an immigration offense, that is a civil offense not a felony. It is unconscionable not to rein back this unprecedented brutal, law-breaking enforcement system-- especially here. Someday there will be accountability and prosecution-- whether Nuremberg trials, legal jeopardy, or truth and reconciliation. But we need action TODAY. Other states and other governors have shown that state-level resistance to ICE's illegal overreach and cruelty works. If you won't stand up for human rights then consider the economic devastation to Maine. Silence is compliance. Please support LD 1971. Do NOT veto it. Someday history will ask: who stood on the side of righteousness and compassion, on the side of the rule of law and human decency. Maine needs LD1971 now. You stood up to Trump once. Please rein back ICE.