SCARBOROUGH – A new report by an immigrants’ rights organization in Maine is accusing ICE of using a holding center in Scarborough for transferring immigrants detained in Maine out of state.
The report is based on public records and available data that continue to contradict statements by DHS and ICE that the agency is working to protect public safety, apprehending the “worst of the worst” among illegal aliens in Maine and nationwide.
The Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition released a new report this week, outlining what ICE uses its Scarborough facility for.
The facility has been a source of controversy and scrutiny ever since DHS launched what it called “Operation Catch of the Day” in January.
Panagioti Tsolkas, a spokesperson for the coalition, said that at one time, ICE was holding detainees at Cumberland County Jail in Portland, but ICE canceled that contract earlier this year.
The coalition’s report noted that tensions between ICE and the county have run high ever since ICE began detaining people who worked as corrections officers at the jail. Now, the agency’s Scarborough facility is the only ICE property left in the state.
“There’s no local facility holding immigration detainees any longer,” he said. “ICE canceled the contract with the Cumberland County Jail, and so this is the facility where people end up and are shipped across the country from.”
The report indicates that Scarborough is more important on the national level, sending about 40% of the detainees that arrive there out of state, usually to states farther south.
The report bases its conclusions in part on repositories of data, some coming from ICE itself. The most notable example of insider data comes from the Deportation Data Project, a project run by the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley.
The project periodically submits requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act for data on ICE-related arrests and activities from DHS.
The project’s latest data repository covers a period from Jan. 1, 2022 through Aug. 6, 2026. An analysis by Spectrum News shows that so far in 2026, ICE has arrested and detained more people in Maine that it has in the previous four years.
And this year, the data shows the number of arrests grew, even after the surge in January. Even the fatal shooting by ICE agents of a Biddeford man in July does not appear to have slowed the agency’s momentum.
The latest ICE data, according to the project, shows that as of Aug. 6, 2026, ICE agents have arrested and detained 491 people. That’s more than the 465 people ICE arrested in Maine in all of 2022, the highest single-year number seen in the previous four years.
Other arrest trends during 2026 show a nearly continuous uptick month by month. After January, when agents arrested and detained 203 Mainers, ICE arrested only 28 people in February.
From there, however, the numbers slowly grew, peaking in June with 74.
Shelby Leighton, an attorney representing Robert Peck, a South Portland man suing ICE agents whom he recorded threatening to arrest him for following them, said she too had review the project’s data, and noted the upward monthly trend in arrests in particular.
“That’s really concerning,” she said. “Anecdotally, it seemed that continued over the summer, and I’m worried about that as a community member.”
In July 2026, the overall number of arrests with detention dropped to 52, but nearly half of those arrests happened after July 13, when an ICE agent shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, prompting backlash among Mainers overall.
In fact, the data shows agents arrested another person in Madison the next day, on July 14, and yet another in Augusta on July 15.
A DHS spokesperson said that efforts to remove illegal aliens nationwide are working, with more than three million illegal aliens deported in 2025 alone.
“Nationwide our law enforcement is targeting public safety threats—including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists,” the spokesperson said.
But in Maine, the data does not indicate agents are picking up a large number of hardened criminals. The ICE data indicates that of the 491 people arrested so far in 2026, only 56 – just over 11% – have had any kind of previous criminal conviction.
Of those, only one person has been convicted of aggravated assault, the only crime classified by the FBI as technically a “violent crime.”
Other convictions include six people convicted of assault charges. Added with the arrestee previously convicted of aggravated assault, all seven cases add up to less than 1.5% of the total number of people arrested in Maine this year.
Other previous convictions are for some drug offenses, but by far the largest number of offenses the detainees were convicted of, at 17, are “traffic offenses,” making up nearly one in three detainees. None of those convicted of previous crimes were convicted or murder, rape, pedophilia or terrorism charges, according to the ICE figures.
When asked about the data, the DHS spokesperson said the data’s accuracy cannot be fully trusted.
“The Deportation Data Project relies on information releases that have not been reviewed, audited or given context,” the spokesperson said. “DHS nor ICE have verified the accuracy, methodology or the analysis of the project and its results.”
Tsolkas said the coalition also noted the small number of previous convictions among detainees.
“It was pretty simple to show that it was not about public safety,” he said. “It wasn’t about the worst of the worst.”
As to the true motives behind the ICE activity, Tsolkas called it “political theater.”
“We believe that it’s largely based on a political message or rallying, sort of dog-whistling to a certain demographic here that maybe that there’s political interest in engaging or mobilizing by a show of force, and we think that’s counter to public safety,” he said.
Tsolkas said he hopes the public will take knowledge gained from this data and get engaged with lawmakers on the state and federal level as they continue to craft public policy related to ICE.