Liz Eisele McLellan of Westbrook keeps an eye out for federal immigration agents in Westbrook on Thursday. Eisele McLellan is a volunteer with a local ICE rapid response team. “Our goal is to make Westbrook as unwelcome to ICE as possible,” said Eisele McLellan. “It’s day three and it seems like it’s been a month.” (Daryn Slover/Staff Photographer)
WESTBROOK — As she drove around town on Thursday morning, Liz Eisele McLellan’s head was on a swivel, scanning the streets for any sign of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Every Connecticut and New Hampshire license plate, every car with tinted windows — especially gray Ford Explorers — and every driver wearing a mask made her suspicious.
Her phone buzzed with messages from a group chat of 50 to 100 other community members who McLellan said have taken it upon themselves to follow and document immigration enforcement.
It was a quiet morning compared to Wednesday, when it was impossible to drive down Main Street without seeing someone who was dressed like an ICE agent.
“They were like locusts,” McLellan said.
It was on Spring Street where she spotted a masked man driving a car with a Massachusetts license plate.
“Right there,” she said, before swerving her car to make a U-turn onto Main Street. McLellan stopped at a red light and lost the car, but she barely had time to pause before a slew of notifications directed her to a new sighting.
In the end, it was not, in fact, a quiet morning.
Community members began preparing for potential ICE activity in Maine back in September. On Tuesday, when the federal operation began, they started driving around the city on a daily basis.
There are similar groups in other communities all over Maine and the U.S. that are set up to monitor ICE activity, especially in the mornings and afternoons when children are going to school or coming home.
Liz Eisele McLellan of Westbrook keeps her daughter’s lifeguard whistle around her neck in case she comes across federal immigration agents. She tries to bring as much attention to the situation as she can so that people know agents are at a particular location. (Daryn Slover/Staff Photographer)
Now, the volunteers in Maine say federal agents have started showing up at their homes and intimidating them or threatening arrest. Some of them, masked and wearing tactical gear, have issued stark warnings not to pursue them.
In Minneapolis, where a similar large-scale immigration enforcement operation has been underway for weeks, some observers said they were threatened and detained for filming federal agents. Renee Good was watching federal agents in her neighborhood after dropping off her child when she was shot and killed by an ICE agent.
“ This was not about law enforcement doing their job, this was about a federal agent using intimidation to discourage lawful civic activity in my own community,” said Erin Cavallaro, one of the volunteers in Maine who said officers came to her home. “What I was doing was lawful.”
The First Amendment protects people’s right to observe, monitor and record federal law enforcement, according to the National Coalition Against Censorship.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
“Our goal is to bear witness to ICE activity in our community,” said Cavallaro. “To document what we see and ensure transparency and accountability — not to interfere with law enforcement.”
‘HOW DO WE RESPOND?’
Bob Peck’s Thursday began with the blaring of whistles and car horns outside his home in South Portland.
The retiree looked out of the window, the one overlooking Tres Leches Cake’s Flor, a local Mexican restaurant, and realized the commotion was related to an ICE alert.
He sprang up, pulled on his coat and rushed out the door.
The SUV with New York plates left the parking lot suddenly, and the crowd of onlookers dispersed, but Peck jumped into his car and followed.
“It was an opportunity to learn what their mode of operation is,” he said in a phone interview Thursday. “I was learning how to be an ally neighbor, learning how to document, observe and record in the moment.”
He lost the vehicle in Scarborough, so he decided to scope out the ICE detention center instead. A black SUV with Massachusetts plates pulled out of the lot when he got there. He followed it.
The vehicle stopped on a side street off Route 1 and two men got out. Peck started recording what happened next.
“Are you following us?” asked the first man wearing an army green tactical vest and a hat and buff around his face. He leaned forward, peering through the slightly open passenger side window of Peck’s car.
“Um … yeah,” he responded.
“What you’re doing is called impeding federal law enforcement,” the agent said. “This is your first and only warning. If you continue to impede us and follow us, you will be arrested.”
“Except I’m not impeding you,” Peck replied.
“You just openly admitted that you were following us,” said another agent, his face covered with a black hat and fleece buff.
“I am following you,” Peck replied. “I’m not impeding you. I’m observing you.”
“If you keep doing it, we’ll pull you back out and arrest you,” the second agent said before the pair returned to their black SUV.
Peck interpreted that as a threat.
The 67-year-old has participated in riots and demonstrations for decades. He grew up in an anti-war household, he said, so that ethos was ingrained in him since childhood. In high school, he was named “most likely to occupy the administration building” — something he actually did two years later, in 1979, while attending Amherst College.
But this interaction rattled him. He pulled into a nearby parking lot, killed the car’s ignition, and started to shake.
“The adrenaline slammed me,” he said. Still, he plans to continue his efforts.
A No ICE Allowed sign hangs in the front window of the African Supermarket in Westbrook. Liz Eisele McLellan rushed to the market when she heard federal immigration agents were there Thursday morning. The agents left after Eisele McLellan drew attention to the agents. (Daryn Slover/Staff Photographer)
In Minnesota, some federal agents have been recording telling observers it is illegal to follow and film them. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in July that videotaping ICE agents is doxing them and constitutes “violence,” and the Trump administration has said it intends to prosecute those who do it.
The First Amendment and the Right to Record Act allow people to observe and film officers from a reasonable distance as long as it does not interfere with their law enforcement activities, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The law does not clearly define what it means to impede federal law enforcement, so the right to record could be subject to limitations.
A TIGHT COMMUNITY
McLellan said she does this work because, as a white woman, she said it’s important to her to use her privilege to help her more vulnerable neighbors.
Still, when someone she thinks was an immigration agent showed up at her house along with three other cars that barricaded the street, “It was one of the scariest things that ever happened to me,” McLellan said.
“This is a warning,” an agent told her. “We know you live right here.”
She said she called 911 and told the dispatcher what happened. They said she should comply with the federal agents.
Like Peck, she plans to continue her efforts. But because agents know where she lives, her children are staying elsewhere for the time being.
“I want people to see the destruction that is happening to regular Maine neighborhoods,” she said.
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