Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce speaks at a news conference Thursday. (Derek Davis/Staff Photographer)
Federal detainees apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were removed from the Cumberland County Jail on Thursday night.
Sheriff Kevin Joyce said ICE officials called his office Thursday to say they were removing all of their detainees out of the Portland jail. The facility typically holds about 60 people for federal offices, Joyce has said, but he did not immediately confirm how many people were moved overnight.
The move came just hours after Joyce criticized the federal agency’s practices at a news conference he held to discuss the apprehension of a Cumberland County corrections officer the night before.
Joyce said the agency was negligent because the man, who he did not identify, didn’t have a criminal record, and described ICE’s tactics as “bush-league policing.”
The officer was driving in Portland’s Bayside neighborhood when he was stopped by several agents who apprehended him from the vehicle in about three minutes, according to video footage of the detainment. After the agents took him into custody and left the scene, a witness said the car was still running on the side of the road.
The federal government pays the jail $150 per day for each federal detainee held at the facility, including those who were brought in by ICE.
In November, county commissioners voted against a proposal to remove the ICE detainees from the jail, despite months of calls from community advocates to end the contract.
LATE-NIGHT PETITION
One of those moved out of the jail appears to be Tong Qi Lu, a 56-year-old native of China who has been held at the facility for the last 10 months.
ICE’s online locator indicated that he is now being held at the Plymouth County Correctional Center in Massachusetts, despite a federal judge’s order Thursday night not to move him out of state. It’s unclear if he was moved before or after Lu’s attorney, Oriana Farnham, filed an emergency petition to prevent his transfer.
Farnham said in the petition that Lu left China when he was about 20 years old, and that he has called the U.S. home for more than 30 years. He was living in Bangor, where he owns a restaurant, according to court records.
Lu was taken into custody in April after a Maine State Police trooper stopped Lu while he was searching for supplies at a scrapyard with the property owner’s permission, according to court filings.
“After checking Mr. Lu’s driver’s license, the Trooper informed him, ‘You’ve got trouble — ICE wants you,’” Farnham wrote.
The trooper took Lu to his restaurant to hug his family members, records state, before Lu was transferred to ICE custody and moved to Portland.
ICE determined in 2020 that his removal to China “was not likely in the foreseeable future” and that he posed no risk to the community, Farnham wrote in court records. She said Lu has been complying with ICE’s conditions of release for the last five years, and that a petition for lawful permanent status is still pending.
This is a developing story.
