Maine Democrats are moving quickly to tie Republican Sen. Susan Collins to a deadly shooting carried out by federal immigration agents in their state, hoping the controversy will redirect attention away from an unrelated scandal that has rattled their party ahead of a high-stakes U.S. Senate race.
On Monday, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a motorist just outside Maine’s largest city — marking the second time in a single week that ICE has used deadly force on U.S. soil, and at least the ninth death since President Donald Trump launched his immigration crackdown. It was the first such incident in Maine, a Democratic-led state with a sizable immigrant population that Trump had already singled out earlier this year following two high-profile ICE shootings in Minnesota.
Officials confirmed that the agents involved in the Maine shooting were not wearing body cameras, and the victim — a 26-year-old Colombian national — was not the subject of their investigation.
The killing triggered an immediate and forceful response from Democrats, who are still struggling to regroup after sexual assault allegations forced their party’s Senate nominee, Graham Platner, to withdraw from the race late last week. Platner denied the allegation, though many of his former supporters described it as credible.
Party officials are set to choose a replacement candidate at a July 25 convention, giving whoever is selected only a matter of months to mount a campaign against a long-serving incumbent in a race widely considered pivotal to Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate.
In the immediate wake of the shooting, several Democrats eyeing the Senate seat converged on the scene and on Collins’ office to make their voices heard.
Senate hopeful Nirav Shah, a Democrat and former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, drew a direct connection between the shooting and Collins’ position as chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees ICE’s budget.
