“They Are Afraid.”
Packed Crowd Urges Bar Harbor to Enact Maine Bill Limiting State, Local Support for Immigration Enforcement Ahead of Summer.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by First National Wealth Management.
BAR HARBOR—Many people wearing t-shirts or paper strips that read “LD 1971 Now” came to the microphone at the Bar Harbor Council Chamber, April 7, to ask the town to codify an early resolution declaring the town a sanctuary city because they were concerned about the police interacting with federal immigration and customs agents known as ICE.
Some people’s voices cracked with emotion.
Some speakers tapped the microphone before they began.
Some barely whispered, having lost their voice.
Speaker after speaker passionately advocated for the town to codify its resolution, show that it is already working with new state rules (LD 1971) about relations with ICE and also communicate to the visitors, foreign workers, college students, and others that visit or live in the coastal town that Bar Harbor supports them.
The crowd at the workshop overflowed into another room and those speaking took turns, but one after another asked the Council for certain things: to codify the town’s current sanctuary community resolution, to codify the state’s law LD 1971 prior to the July enactment, and to stand on what they believe is the right side of history when it comes to ICE.
“I think it’s a no brainer that we adopt LD 1971 as fast as possible,” Councilor Randell Sprague said.
State law, LD 1971, is meant to clarify the relationship between local law authorities and federal immigration officials and will be enacted in June. Maine Legislature passed LD 1971 in June 2025. It will go into effect 90 days after the Maine Legislature adjourns.
It’s meant to explain how local and state law enforcement agencies interact with federal civil immigration engagements and it prohibits state and local law enforcement from performing the investigation, interrogation, detention, detection, stopping, searching or arresting “a person for [civil] immigration enforcement purposes.”
What many of those speaking at the Town Council meeting hoped for was an earlier implementation of those rules in Bar Harbor.
Bar Harbor Police Chief David Kerns explained at the start of the workshop that his department is already doing just that.
“We’re currently operating with LD 1971 in place,” Chief Kerns said.
In all, fourteen people spoke in favor of Bar Harbor doing more. Four of those speakers were not from Bar Harbor, but other area towns and Sullivan.
Councilor Earl Brechlin agreed with Sprague that the matter should be on the Town Council’s next agenda. Some in the audience suggested that it might be a risk for Bar Harbor to codify LD 1971 early or do similar measures.
“Increasing the passenger cap for cruise ships is a risk,” Brechlin joked. “This is not a risk. This is doing what’s right, I think. And we need to move forward on it.”
Bar Harbor and Mount Desert have both previously declared sanctuary status for their communities.
In 2017, after a citizens’ petition, Mount Desert voters declared 101-59 that the town would be a “sanctuary community.” The non-binding resolution hoped to “protect the independence of our local law enforcement by refusing to require police or town employees to serve as enforcers of federal immigration law.”
It was the first town in Maine to do so.
That same year, neighboring Bar Harbor residents voted 351-62 to support declaring that town a sanctuary community.
LOCAL POLICE MISSION
“Our accountability is not just a suggestion,” Chief Kerns said to the crowd at the beginning of the workshop. “It is a legal mandate.”
No matter what the political climate is, he said, he and his officers are held to the highest standards of the state.
He also read the department’s mission statement and core values.
“This is what holds us accountable to you,” Chief Kerns said.
Federal immigration law enforcement, he said, is not the department’s mission. The local police department follows the town’s directive and state laws.
“That’s how we operate currently today,” Chief Kerns said of LD 1971.
That means he doesn’t see anything changing in the department’s operations before July whether things are codified or not by one community the department serves and not another.
The state law gets operationalized through internal police and town policies, Chair Valerie Peacock said. So, too, do enforcement mechanisms that are under the police chief and external mechanisms that speak to certification of officers through the Maine Criminal Justice Center. To her, the ask is about writing policy that directs police to stand up with the new laws. There should be a version of that to share, she said.
“I’m super proud to be part of a community that is doing what we already do,” Peacock told the crowd.
She also was concerned that people expressed that the current resolution wasn’t enough and was somewhat downplayed.
Peacock said, “That got passed at town meeting. They are not hollow words. It’s not by luck that we have the police department that we have and they have the values that they have.”
That happens by community members coming out to workshops like these, she explained. It’s because the community has stood up and spoken out and past councils have spoken about it. Then councils directed staff to do so.
“I don’t want to discount the work that this community has done,” she said, “that has gotten us to a place where we have a police department that is already doing this.”
PUBLIC COMMENT
The people in the community who spoke on Tuesday explained passionately about what they wanted.
Public comment began with Phil Worden of Bar Harbor who said, “I want to stress that I trust our police chief and I have no problem at all about whether or not he would violate the state statue before it goes into effect. That’s just not an issue.”
His focus, he said, is on the residents who are afraid of being swept up with ICE. He’d tell them the local police department doesn’t cooperate with ICE.
The current resolution has limits, he said. It isn’t enforceable. It’s visionary and aspirational.
“Our vulnerable residents, immigrants, mixed status families, asylum seekers, seasonal workers, COA students on visas, and even those who simply fear being misidentified because of their looks will not rely on aspirations. They need clear, durable rules that they can turn to our police for help without risking immigration consequences,” Worden said.
Without that, domestic violence victims and others can’t feel secure reporting they are being hurt or other crimes against them.
“To a battered woman deciding whether to call 9-1-1, uncertainty is the same as danger,” Worden said.
“Nothing shows that the resolution is not working more than the people who are not here tonight,” Worden continued.
They aren’t at the meeting because they are apathetic, he said, but “it’s because they are afraid to leave their homes.”
Tammy Richards also spoke to that point, telling of a younger relative of hers who is an Asian-American, who she said started being glared at after COVID because of anti-Asian sentiment.
Her young relative began an Instagram account for Maine Asian youth so that they could post poems and artwork expressing their experience. They spoke at rallies at racism pointed toward Asian youth. They were in high school at the time.
“If they were here, they would tell you exactly what they think. But they are not here,” Richards said after a pause. “They don’t attend rallies any more and they walk around with a passport at all times because they don’t look like an American to others. My last phone call with them was a discussion about which attorney they should call if they—or one of their friends who also don’t look like citizens—if they get picked up by a federal agency.”
None of their efforts ended racism, Richards said, but it mattered.
“They taught some Mainers about Asian youth in Maine,” she said.
They helped other Asian youths know they are not alone.
“It’s going to take a lot of small things to beat the huge wave of craziness that is here,” Richards told the councilors.
Similarly, Ellen Dohmen said that she wanted the town to pass updates to that resolution or codify it in ordinance because she wanted the whole world to know where Bar Harbor stood.
It stands as an open place with diversity and inclusion, she said.
NEXT STEPS
The next steps might be the council adopting a formal resolution or order at its next meeting. It also might be a citizens’ petition to do the same.
“Chief has explained thoughtfully and carefully that everything we want is already being done. Our current policy and practice ensure that the protections that we call for are already in place,” John O’Brien said.
However, he said, without the backing of law, it comes down to a matter of good faith on everyone’s parts.
Instead, it should be codified and the identity of the international community of Bar Harbor be protected. That should start now, he said.
O’Brien and others said they’d have a petition outside in the hallway, collecting signatures for a citizens’ initiative that he said would address weaknesses in the new state law.
In February, O’Brien had presented the councilors with a proposed ordinance that would amend town code and make it so that “no person acting in their capacity as a town employee shall assist or cooperate with, or allow any town monies or resources to be used to assist, cooperate with or facilitate any federal agency in any immigration enforcement operation, except where legally required to do so by state or federal law or court order.”
The proposal also stated the town would not give any ICE access to Bar Harbor-owned facilities for its immigration enforcement.
In it, it said that no Bar Harbor employee “shall support or assist any federal agency in immigration enforcement operations.”
That would include contact information, home or work address, custody status. It would not allow investigations or interrogations as part of an immigration enforcement operation; helping ICE establish traffic perimeter; being present and assisting or supporting an ICE operation.
That February proposed ordinance also states that Bar Harbor employees and departments couldn’t enter into contracts or agreements or arrangements with ICE that would allow it to “grant any federal immigration enforcement authority to a town department or its employees, including but not limited to agreements created under 8 U.S.C. § I 357(g); or authorize the custodial transfer or detention of a person in removal proceedings or for other immigration enforcement operation purposes, including but not limited to Intergovernmental Service Agreements, Intergovernmental Agreements, and ICE riders to Intergovernmental Agreements.”
Town employees shall not “stop, arrest, detain or continue to detain a person for immigration enforcement operation purposes, including pursuant to an immigration detainer; an administrative immigration warrant, any other immigration enforcement document, or information or suspicion that the person is not present legally in the United States, or that the person has committed an immigration violation.”
All photos: Shaun Farrar/Bar Harbor Story. Correction. We mistakenly attributed Tammy Richards’ quotes. This was completely our error, which we’ve corrected at 1:49 p.m., April 8, with so many apologies.
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Lovely reporting. So much of our local industry relies on people who don't fit Stephen Millers idea of white American.
Thank you to Phil and Roberta and all of those citizens who stood up and argued how important it is to have this codified.