Local police departments in Portland and South Portland have maintained that they do not communicate or cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But a new investigation from the Portland Press Herald shows local officers texted with an ICE agent during the January enforcement surge. The paper obtained copies of the text threads through a public records request. Press Herald reporter Rachel Estabrook co-wrote the story along with reporters Morgan Womack and Dylan Tusinski. Estabrook spoke with All Things Considered host Ari Snider.
Ari Snider: So Rachel, who was in this group chat?
Rachel Estabrook: It was among a special agent from the Department of Homeland Security named Jeffrey Larocque – his LinkedIn page says he’s based in Boston – as well as South Portland police chief Daniel Ahern and Portland police major Jason King. So not the chief in Portland, but someone who’s in the police command.
What were they talking about in this thread?
First, I want to be clear about what they were not talking about. They were not talking about where immigrants would be picked up, or where agents would go, so not the actual immigration enforcement itself. Instead, they mostly talked about the Homeland Security agents’ concerns about protesters. Larocque said his team was being “stalked”, and he and the police leaders were essentially strategizing about how to keep the Homeland Security agents safe and make sure the protests didn’t get out of control or turn dangerous. They also shared some screenshots of online conversations among protesters, and Larocque, the Homeland Security agent, referred to protesters as “crazy people” or “insane” a few times in the text messages. King from the Portland Police said he’d had a crime analyst watching, and he offered to set up a camera, though Portland’s police chief told us on Thursday that that never got set up.
So it seems from these messages that local police got early access to some information about the end of the ICE surge before the public heard about it. Can you explain more about those messages in messages?
Just a few days after the surge started, the Homeland Security agent told the police officials that his team planned to leave on Saturday because of a storm that was expected to roll into Maine. Both police departments have told us they were not sure if it was really a full official kind of notification about the surge ending. That’s how they explained to us that they didn’t share the information with the public. And I’ll say that was also unclear to us. Reading the text messages, we weren’t sure if Larocque meant all the agents who were there for the surge were leaving, or just a subset. But South Portland’s police chief did pass on that information to the South Portland city manager, who told the city council, so it was at least that notable. And you know, you’ll recall, it was about a week later, after Larocque had given this initial heads up, that the community really understood that the surge was over.
In addition to that early access to information about the end of the surge, were there other messages that stood out to you for what they revealed about the relationship between the agencies involved here?
There were some things said that were notable. At one point, the Homeland Security special agent said, “we certainly pissed off the libs!” And King replied, “Haha, for sure.” And Larocque , that Homeland Security Agent, said, using the term illegals, that they had detained 200 people, including “two Dominican drug targets”. Again, his words, and South Portland’s police chief responded, “Nice work. Thank you for the difficult job you all have. Keep up the good work.” Then Larocque used an expletive that President Trump has used to refer to the countries where he hopes the people who were detained will be sent back to, though I’ll say neither of the local police officials responded to that message, so far as we can see.
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How have the Portland and South Portland police departments responded to this right? Have they shared any more information with you?
Both departments said the messages are consistent with their promises not to collaborate on immigration enforcement. Portland’s police chief stressed to us on Thursday that they were protecting public safety, and they would have done the same for anyone who needed help, whether they were federal agents or not. He said they’d been getting complaints from hotel staff and management, so they were trying to be responsive to that as well as they were coordinating with Homeland Security about monitoring the protests. South Portland chief Ahern said “Maintaining a positive working relationship with federal law enforcement is important and helpful for local law enforcement.”
In a written statement on Friday, Portland Police Chief Mark Dubois said the communication was related to public safety and security issues at a Portland hotel, and not with ICE operations, and that “this type of communication and response is in line with how we would respond to anyone requesting public safety services.”