'You're complicit in this': Jim McGovern blasts Susan Collins over ICE shooting

The fatal shooting of a 26-year-old Colombian man by a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Maine on Monday has become the latest flashpoint in the administration's crackdown on illegal immigration. Maine Democrats have seized the opportunity to link the incident to the state's Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who voted to pass a $70 billion bill to fund the agency through President Donald Trump's term. Many, including Rep. Jim McGovern, slammed Collins after she called for a full and impartial investigation of the incident. 

The man killed in Biddeford on Monday was identified as a 26-year-old Colombian national authorised to work in the U.S., and the Colombian embassy said it was in contact with American authorities and was providing assistance to the family, PBS News reported. The ICE agents involved in the incident were not wearing body cameras, and the victim was not the target of their probe, officials said. It was the second such incident in a week in which ICE used deadly force; thus, it was swiftly followed by widespread outcry, with prominent political figures reacting to it. 

In the aftermath of the shooting in Maine, a Democratic-led state with a relatively large immigrant population, Collins, who is up for an expectedly heated midterm battle, called for a full investigation, claiming that the FBI had already secured the site. However, Democrats took the opportunity to sway attention away from their scandal-laden former candidate, Graham Platner, to target the Republican senator. Sharing her post, McGovern pointed out that Collins was in favor of clearing the $70 billion in funding for ICE; therefore, she was complicit in the incident. "You just voted to give these thugs another $70 billion. You’re complicit in this and every other murder committed by Trump’s secret police," he wrote. 

Last month, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives ended a longstanding political stalemate over funding immigration enforcement operations by passing a $70 billion bill ​to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the ​remainder of Trump's administration. The 214-212 vote, which was roughly ⁠along party lines, sent the bill to President Trump, who promptly signed it into effect. In another post, McGovern accused Collins of supercharging ICE funding, claiming that she can still call Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin and ask him to stop "killing her own constituents."

Senate hopeful Democrat Nirav Shah, the former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also launched an attack on Collins, pointing out that she, as the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had oversight of ICE's budget. "She's got power, but she didn't use it to rein in a rogue agency, and instead gave them a blank check to kill," Shah said in a press conference on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, responding to the two fatal shootings, ICE is set to pause all non-urgent vehicle stops, Maine Sen. Angus King's office told NPR. The senator's spokesman, Matthew Felling, shared that DHS had confirmed the policy shift. Collins also posted on X that she had called for change. "I spoke with DHS Secretary Mullin last night and urged him to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops," she wrote. However, DHS told the publication in a statement that it won't "disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics," and it remains unclear how the policy change will play out in practice.