On August 11, 2026, more than 150 people lined Main Street outside Susan Collins' office in Biddeford, Maine.

They were there about a vote. In June, Collins voted to give U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement roughly $70 billion in new funding with no reforms attached — one of the Republican senators who did. They were also there about a killing. On July 13, an ICE officer shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian father, during a vehicle stop in the middle of Biddeford. He was not the person ICE was looking for.

But the moment from that protest worth sitting with is smaller than either of those things.

Seven months, and a newsletter

Alessia Gaspar Da Silva's husband, Marcos, was taken by ICE in January. He is still in custody.

She told the crowd what those months have been like for him: fed once every 30 hours, denied medical care, moved to different states without anyone telling her.

"He's been gone for seven months," she said. "It feels like a lifetime."

Then she said what happened when she asked her senator for help. She reached out to Collins' office repeatedly. What came back was a newsletter, listing the senator's accomplishments.

"Collins has not done anything. She has no accountability. No transparency. No transparency for the people that are … being terrorized."

A constituent whose husband has been held for seven months wrote her senator and received a list of that senator's achievements. That is not a policy disagreement. That is a constituent service failure, and it is the kind of thing a 30-year incumbent is supposed to be good at.

Why the bodycam promise lands badly here

Collins has an answer ready when Maine asks her about ICE. Two and a half weeks after Guerrero was killed, she announced that ICE would deploy body cameras nationwide by the end of August — and said it was happening "by my request."

We went through that claim when she made it. The short version: in early June, the Senate voted on an amendment that would have required ICE agents to wear body cameras. Collins voted against it. Then she voted for the $70 billion with no strings attached.

The agents in Biddeford were not wearing body cameras. There is no footage of what happened to Guerrero.

So when Collins offers Maine a bodycam announcement, she is offering a fix for a gap she voted twice to leave open.

What the neighbors saw

Monica Davis lives a few blocks from Guerrero's family. She was helping a friend move when she saw a girl running down the road saying, "They've just killed someone, ICE just killed someone in the street."

"I will just never forget that moment of discovering that it had happened right here in the center of town, right next to our home."

Pam Ericson teaches in Lewiston public schools and came from Bath. She described what the enforcement surge has done to her classroom: "I work with kids who just came to the United States, and they don't come to school. I have to give them rides, their families won't go to work. It's very scary."

State Sen. Henry Ingwersen of York County was blunter: "Susan's vote to fund ICE with no strings attached was shameful."

The hearing she has been invited to

The protest happened the same day Rep. Chellie Pingree announced that members of Congress will hold a field hearing in Biddeford on ICE's use of force in the Guerrero case. It is set for 11 a.m. on Monday, August 17, at Biddeford High School's Little Theater, and it is open to the public. Pingree will be joined by Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts.

Biddeford Mayor Liam LaFountain said he hopes Republicans show up too:

"Johan's family and the people of Biddeford deserve a full and independent understanding of what occurred. Federal authority must come with federal accountability, and Congress has an important role to play in providing that oversight when the exercise of federal authority results in the death of a member of our community."

The family's attorney, Ben Gideon, told Maine Public that the family is cooperating with the Maine Attorney General's investigation, but that no federal investigators have reached out to them.

The gap

Susan Collins' whole political identity rests on being the senator who is different — the moderate who breaks with her party when Maine needs her to.

Here is what Maine got. She voted against requiring body cameras. She voted for $70 billion with no oversight. An ICE officer killed a young father in a Maine downtown. She announced a bodycam program as her own achievement. A woman whose husband has been detained for seven months got a newsletter.

And on August 17 there will be a hearing about all of it, a few miles from that office, that she has been invited to attend.

Source

Biddeford protest targets Sen. Collins over ICE funding by Eesha Pendharkar, Maine Morning Star, August 11, 2026. Photo: Eesha Pendharkar/Maine Morning Star.