BIDDEFORD, Maine — Dozens of “I voted” stickers adorned a memorial on the corner of Hill and Pool streets on Wednesday, marking the place where an immigrant from Colombia was shot dead by an ICE agent in July.
One sticker, placed on a jersey of the Colombian national soccer team, had the words Para ti written on it.
“For you.”
It was a small but poignant reminder that high gas prices and an unpopular war weren’t the only issues on the minds of Maine voters on Tuesday, when they chose Democrat Troy Jackson over veteran Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, after 30 years in office. Many Maine residents also dedicated their votes to Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was on his way to work when an ICE officer fatally shot him during a traffic stop.
Collins’s defeat came on the heels of an intense immigration crackdown in Maine that has ebbed and flowed over the last 10 months. In January alone, more than 200 people were detained, the majority of whom had no criminal record, during an enforcement surge the Trump administration had dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day.”
The dragnet-like presence transformed the atmosphere in communities along the southern Maine cost, peaking with the death of Durán Guerrero. Many were horrified by the shooting, using it as added motivation to hold Collins to account for the actions of a Republican administration bent on increasing its deportation numbers.
“It broke my heart,” said Kristin Jortberg, a retired teacher and Biddeford resident, who left her “I voted” sticker at the memorial in Biddeford on Wednesday, snapping a photo to send to her sister.
Jortberg, 67, said that she didn’t view herself as especially political, and that she had voted for Collins once in the past. But after watching ICE’s activity in Maine over the last year, she decided to back Jackson this time.
“I saw [Collins] as being someone who was independent, stood apart,” Jortberg said. Now “she’s just going with the status quo.”
At Maine Democrats’ election celebration in Portland Tuesday night, nearly every speaker mentioned ICE, and the remarks calling out the agency as hateful and violent drew some of the biggest applause lines.
“I will fight to abolish ICE,” Jackson declared onstage in the early hours of Wednesday morning, to raucous cheers. “Mass agents terrorizing our neighbors and ripping families apart should never be accepted in the United States of America.”
The surge in immigration enforcement last January rattled Portland and communities just to the south, where many of the arrests were concentrated. The operations were met with significant blowback. From Portland to Lewiston, Scarborough to Biddeford, thousands of people took to the streets, closing off Portland’s downtown and protesting outside an ICE processing building in Scarborough.
Those areas have largely gone blue in past elections. But this year, some communities, including Biddeford, turned out for Democrats in larger numbers than in the past.
In the 2020 Senate race, the Democratic candidate at the time, Sara Gideon, won about 51 percent of the vote in Biddeford, while Collins got about 41 percent, according to a New York Times analysis.
On Tuesday, Jackson beat Collins by a more significant margin — 66 percent of the vote, to 34 percent for Collins.
In Lewiston, a city north of Portland also heavily affected by ICE enforcement, Collins won by 2 percentage points against Gideon in 2020. This year, Jackson beat Collins there by 8 percentage points.
Collins has tried to portray herself as an advocate for moderation in immigration enforcement.
More than a week after “Operation Catch of the Day” began, Collins said in a statement on social media that she had spoken to then-Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, who told her the “enhanced” operation had ended in Maine. But ICE arrests continued, albeit in quieter ways. Agents detained delivery drivers, health care workers, seafood processing workers, and corrections officers.
At times, Maine residents, progressive critics, and labor unions asked why Collins wasn’t doing more to push back — and questioned her assurances that surges in the state were ending.
“This would not be the first time she has taken the administration’s word on something and presented it as fact to her constituents,” Lara Rosen, a Portland resident and parent of a public school student, told the Globe in January.
Still, in the spring, Collins voted for a $70 billion funding package that would further expand immigration enforcement efforts. And then on July 13, Durán Guerrero, the father of a 3-year-old girl, was killed.
The agent involved in the shooting, David Brouillette, turned out to be a new recruit who had been hired despite a host of allegations against him by his ex-wives, including violent episodes and a history of mental health struggles, as detailed in court records and interviews with news media.
Dozens of demonstrators directed their ire at Collins on the day of the shooting, banging on the doors of her office in downtown Biddeford while police blocked them. “Vote her out!” they yelled. (Protesters also chased away Governor Janet Mills when she visited his memorial a few days later, accusing her of ignoring their requests to help curb ICE actions in the state.)
Charlie Dingman, chair of the Maine Democratic Party, said aggressive ICE enforcement and the fatal violence that took place in Biddeford just months ago were a decisive issue in Maine’s election.
“It symbolizes the lack of moral center in our federal government — the willingness of our federal government to use any terror tactic available to victimize people who are just doing their jobs and being part of our communities,” Dingman said in Portland Wednesday morning, after Democratic Governor-elect Hannah Pingree celebrated her victory at an event in Fort Allen Park.
The shooting in Biddeford especially “had a profound impact on how we realized how critical this election was, how fundamental it was to stand against the Trump regime,” Dingman said.
Lance Dutson, a Republican strategist who worked on three of Collins’s past campaigns, said he didn’t think immigration was a “top shelf” issue for Maine voters. But he said that in the months leading up to the election, Collins appeared to “cozy up with the right flank” more than she had traditionally done in the past.
“That made it easier for some voters to make the connection between her and the very cruel treatment of immigrants by this administration. That all culminated in the shooting in Biddeford,” Dutson said.
He added: “A perceived tolerance of the terrible things that the Trump administration is doing, I think, cast a negative shadow.”
On Monday night, Collins’s office in Biddeford was again targeted by protesters. The sidewalk at the entrance was spray-painted in bright red graffiti. It read: “BLOOD on her HANDS.”
Gretchen Larkin, a 29-year-old merchandiser and Biddeford resident who was walking her dog near the memorial on Wednesday, said she didn’t have a strong opinion about Collins until she started hearing about the ICE arrests. Then the shooting happened just a few doors down from her home.
She had only voted in one election before, supporting Kamala Harris in 2024, she said. But on Tuesday, she voted for Jackson.
“People have a lot of not-so-great things to say about Troy, too,” Larkin said. “But in my opinion, whatever helps America change for the better.”
Emma Platoff and Sam Brodey of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at giulia.mcdnr@globe.com. Follow her @giuliamcdnr.