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In the final, petulant hours of his campaign for Senate, Graham Platner chose to conclude the letter formally ending his candidacy with the phrase “Fuck ICE.” This was no mere outburst. As a candidate, Platner vociferously argued that ICE agents should be unmasked, arrested, and made to answer for their violence and had the support of many immigrant leaders and their communities. This was also not merely about immigration per se. Platner called for a coalition of unions, immigrant groups, and civil-rights groups around the broad project of making life for working people in Maine more humane.

The Trump administration’s war against immigrants is one of several issues that have been largely absent from the frenzy of national coverage of Maine’s Senate race, which has focused on Platner’s war against the Democratic Establishment, which he officially lost last week after being accused of rape and withdrawing from the ballot. But the question of ICE’s violence has been central in Maine, a predominantly white state with an expanding immigrant population. In January, a wave of ICE incursions separated family and friends and left immigrant communities terrified. Many were unable to go to work or pay for food or rent.

ICE pulled back after the murder of Alex Pretti in Minnesota but has never left Maine. Now its presence has exploded back into headlines. On Monday morning, 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero’s body lay on the pavement of an intersection in Biddeford, Maine, for five hours in an unrelenting heat wave. Guerrero had been shot in the head by ICE agents while driving his car, then pulled out roughly and handcuffed, perhaps after he was already dead. Nearby were Guerrero’s wife and daughter, a 3-year-old in Bluey pajamas. His death followed that of Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was shot by ICE agents in Texas last week.

Maine’s longtime senator, the Republican Susan........

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