A Republican running for the Maine's open 2nd Congressional District seat expressed outrage that a member of his family is facing deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Paul LePage, the state's former governor, made the disclosure in Augusta at an event where he accepted the endorsement of Maine's Fraternal Order of Police, in response to a question from a Portland Press Herald reporter.
"Not everybody that's here is illegal," LePage said. "I have a father, my son's wife's dad is here legally, but he's being deported because he came from a country that's not of the certain liking of some people in Washington. That's not right. He has a work permit. He should be allowed to stay."
LePage did not name the relative or identify his home country, but he said ICE should concentrate on gang members and criminals.
"Would I go after everybody that's here that have work permits and have been here for decades?" he said. "Probably not. I'd probably go for the gang people and the criminals."
At the same event, LePage – who once declared himself "Trump before Donald Trump" – criticized a new state law that restricts police cooperation with ICE.
His comments come after a year of heavy immigration enforcement in Maine.
In January, the Trump administration sent a surge of agents into the state under Operation Catch of the Day, which ended early amid national backlash after two protesters were fatally shot in Minneapolis.
Of the nearly 200 people detained during the Maine surge, only 11 had criminal convictions, and 68 percent of all those arrested by ICE in the state from January through July had no criminal record.
In July, an ICE agent shot and killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero during an attempted traffic stop in Biddeford.
Duran Guerrero was a Colombian living in the U.S. legally with his wife and young daughter, and he was not the person named in the agents' warrant. Neither agent was wearing a body camera.
According to the National Immigration Project, at least 26 people had died in immigration detention this year as of Sept. 1, after 33 deaths in 2025.