Angus King

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said that while all the facts aren’t known about the fatal shooting of a man by an ICE officer in Maine, “what happened today in Maine is a result of” “overarching, I think, bad faith” on the part of the Trump administration.

King said, “[T]hat’s what, really, the investigation is all about, what were the facts? Did this young man actually try to run over an ICE agent? Or was he in danger of running over other people in the street? And was there a reasonable expectation of bodily harm or deadly force to justify this shooting? The larger question, John, is, why do we have these guys on our streets? Why are they in Biddeford, Maine? The whole premise of this project is false. They’ve talked — you’ve heard over and over and over that it’s all about the worst of the worst. Well, they were in Maine in the winter, went through this big crackdown, if you will, arrested over 200 people. About 19, I think, 19 or 20 of those people had some kind of criminal record. 90% had no criminal record. So this is not about the worst of the worst. This is a broad sweep with people with a quota. They’ve been told they have to arrest 2,000 people a day by the White House. That’s a terrible way — an instruction to give law enforcement. And that’s — what happened today in Maine is a result of that kind of overarching, I think, bad faith.”

He concluded that having agents wear body cameras “would resolve this kind of factual issue that we’re going to be trying to resolve over the next several weeks here in Maine.”