PORTLAND \u2013\u2013 The ACLU of Maine is filing claims against federal agencies over three arrests by ICE agents in Maine this year.<\/p>\n
The ACLU has filed five administrative claims in total over the three incidents against the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carol Garvan, legal director for the ACLU of Maine, said the claims are the first step, and if the agencies don\u2019t respond within the next six months, the ACLU can take them to court. The claims are under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows individuals to file for money damages when they have been injured by federal employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the few but very important legal tools we have to demand that when federal agents are harming the people of Maine, we have a way to stand up and demand accountability,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ACLU of Maine said the claims are related to the arrests of three different men on three different occasions. A description of the claims does not identify the arrestees, nor does it cite the dates or locations of the incidents, but the ACLU provided details about the ICE tactics during the arrests.<\/p>\n
In one case, the ACLU claimed a man was pulled out of his car in front of his family.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the stop, ICE agents violently broke the driver’s side window, spraying broken glass over the entire family, including a baby,\u201d the ACLU wrote.<\/p>\n
That man was held for three weeks before finally being released. In a second incident, the ACLU indicates masked ICE agents went to the home of another man who was in the United States legally, and still took him away to a facility in Massachusetts. He was held for 43 days before also being released.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And in the last incident, the ACLU claimed yet another man \u201cwas racially profiled, violently arrested, and unlawfully detained after agents smashed his car window.\u201d Garvan said he was released within a day.<\/p>\n
The claims in Maine are a part of a nationwide push by the ACLU, which includes a total of 54 claims in 17 states and Washington D.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach of these cases is an individual story, but together they reveal a really widespread and disturbing pattern of civil rights violations,\u201d Garvan said.<\/p>\n
Garvan said this is the first time the Maine ACLU has sought relief under this particular act. She said the agencies have six months to resolve the claims before the ACLU files lawsuits in federal court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s fairly unlikely we\u2019ll get a substantive response in the next six months,\u201d she said. \u201cI think most likely we will be headed to court on these claims.\u201d<\/p>\n
ICE agents have been operating in Maine ever since launching what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called \u201cOperation Catch of the Day\u201d in January. The ICE activities have sparked outrage and protests among Mainers. More recently, ICE agents were involved in the shooting death of Johan Sebasti\u00e1n Dur\u00e1n Guerrero on July 13 in Biddeford.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor over a year now, the Trump Administration has flooded communities all over the country with ICE agents,\u201d Garvan said. \u201cThey have been using violence and intimidation to instill fear in all of us, and so the effort here is to fight back and demand accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Spectrum News.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTLAND \u2013\u2013 The ACLU of Maine is filing claims against federal agencies over three arrests by ICE agents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,129349,112374,129348,10482,3,337158,337157,51048,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-793516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-app-around-maine","tag-app-in-the-community","tag-around-maine-more-maine-news","tag-maine","tag-news","tag-publish-to-facebook-me","tag-publish-to-x-threads-me","tag-sean-murphy","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}