A list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” first published by the U.S. Department of Justice in May no longer includes any entries for Maine, but the reason for the change is unclear.
The Justice Department’s list, announced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, identified states, cities and counties with “policies, laws, or regulations that impede enforcement of federal immigration laws,” according to the page.
The city of Portland, along with Cumberland and Hancock counties, appeared on the initial list of more than 500 locations across the country.
That list disappeared from the Justice Department’s website in early June and was republished on Aug. 5 in a version with just 35 entries that no longer includes any of the three Maine locations.
A spokesperson on Tuesday said the Justice Department has “no comment beyond language in the press release and published criteria.” She included two excerpts, including one stating that the list is “reviewed regularly, to include additional jurisdictions and remove jurisdictions that have remediated their policies, practices, and laws.”
However, representatives of the three Maine jurisdictions said that they had not made changes in response to being included on the list, and in one case had tried to contact the federal department but received no response.
Hancock County Jail Administrator Tim Richardson told the Portland Press Herald earlier this summer that he and Sheriff Scott Kane had called the ICE office in Boston multiple times to learn why the county was included on the list, but they had not received an answer.
On Wednesday, Hancock County Administrator Michael Crooker told the Bangor Daily News that county officials reached out to the members of Maine’s Congressional delegation after learning of the list. “I also emailed the DOJ, but I never received a response,” he said.
Cumberland County Sheriff Scott Kane said in an email Wednesday that “nothing has changed since the list came out” in May. County Manager James Gailey said he is “not sure [of] the status at this point.”
Spokespeople for the Portland Police Department and the city did not immediately respond to questions about the change.
Portland police spokesperson Brad Nadeau previously declined to comment on whether the department coordinated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the case of Denis Omar Rivera Martinez, who was detained by ICE agents last week outside a Portland school the day after he was arrested by Portland police on a domestic violence charge.
In June 2024, Hancock County Jail and Cumberland County were listed by ICE as two of the country’s 146 “limited cooperation institutions.” Those institutions would notify ICE before releasing people from custody but would not hold them for the federal agents.
Portland did not appear on that list, and it’s unclear to what degree the ICE list overlaps with the Justice Department’s “sanctuary jurisdictions” list released almost a year later.
In December 2024, an organization led by Stephen Miller, who is now the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, sent letters to Cumberland and Hancock counties saying they could be criminally liable if they kept “sanctuary policies” and didn’t cooperate with immigration authorities. The letter didn’t point to any specific policies in either county.
