Trump overrides Collins, orders continuation of Maine ICE traffic stops

Senator's attempt to intervene backfires as Trump reverses course on traffic stops

Not long after a federal agent killed a Colombian immigrant in Maine last week, Senator Susan Collins rushed to declare that she had privately spoken to Donald Trump's Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin. Collins credited herself for persuading Mullin to end the vehicle stops by agents that have resulted in numerous killings on U.S. streets, including the deaths of American citizens.

Only hours later, Trump abruptly reversed Mullin's decision, decreeing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement's controversial tactics would continue.

"We CANNOT give up one of ICE's most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!" Trump raged.

The stops resumed, undercutting Collins's effort to project deep concern about the killing.

Political Fallout

The incident neatly captures how Trump, through his handling of this horrific ICE shooting, is inadvertently complicating Collins's path to reelection. The shooting presents a real problem for Collins:

• It highlights her votes to fund Trump's rampaging paramilitary forces
• It underscores her feckless refusal to rein in his worst abuses of power
• It localizes a national issue that could viscerally mobilize Maine voters against her
• It allows Democrats to try to seize the offensive on turf that has historically favored Republicans

"Susan Collins is directly responsible for handing ICE a blank check," Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, told me. "This is front and center now in our communities. And we are going to hold her accountable in November."

The Victim

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was gunned down after agents boxed in his vehicle outside his home in Biddeford. His three-year-old daughter was seen crying after the incident. He has been widely described as a devoted father and hard worker who was in the country legally.

Durán Guerrero was not the intended target of the enforcement operation. The agent who pulled the trigger, David Brouillette, has been described by relatives as mentally ill, violent, dangerous, and a domestic abuser.

Questions About ICE Recruitment

This horror raises profoundly grave questions about how ICE is recruiting, now that Trump and Stephen Miller are staffing up their deportation army at breakneck speed and unshackling it to carry out violent ethnic purges on a mass scale. It is here that Collins deserves severe censure and should be politically vulnerable.

Collins's Votes Under Scrutiny

Democrats plan to make an issue out of a little-noticed vote by Collins not long before the shooting. In early June, Collins opposed an amendment, offered by Democratic Senator Alex Padilla, that would have required ICE agents to wear active body cameras on duty and made footage available to Congress.

The amendment was defeated on party lines amid passage of $70 billion in new ICE funding, which Collins voted for even though it lacked guardrails against future abuses.

These votes could now create bigger problems for Collins. As it turns out, the ICE agents involved in the killing of Durán Guerrero...