Democrats running to replace Platner in key Senate race call for ICE to be 'abolished'

PORTLAND, Maine - Some of the leading contenders in the race to replace former candidate Graham Platner as the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine are amplifying calls to abolish ICE after a fatal shooting by federal immigration officers in the northern New England state.

Hours after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Monday shot and killed a man in Biddeford, which is located about 15 miles south-west of Portland, four of the candidates joined hundreds of protesters who marched by the shooting site.

The shooting comes as the battle to replace Platner is heating up, and will likely boost immigration as an issue in a crucial Senate race that may determine the Senate majority.

"I think we are at the point where ICE needs to be abolished," Nirav Shah, the former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told Fox News Digital. "ICE in its current form has shown itself incapable of doing its job."

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Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, speaking with reporters, said, "This is not acceptable in America. A young man, a dad, has been killed by ICE...This must stop. We need to get ICE out of the streets."

Troy Jackson, a former state Senate president, took to social media immediately after the shooting to write, "Abolish ICE."

Jackson held a sign at the protest that called for abolishing ICE, and reiterated that he's been calling for the dismantling of the agency for months.

Paige Loud, a social worker and former congressional candidate who has also launched a Senate bid, also attended the protest.

"We must abolish ICE and prosecute the leaders of these operations that are destroying communities," she said in a social media post.

The incident in Maine is the second in a week when ICE agents have used deadly force, following the fatal shooting during a traffic stop in Houston, Texas.

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The latest incidents are reigniting protests and scrutiny of federal agents months after the shooting deaths in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the beginning of the year of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Those shootings drew weeks of national coverage and sharp debate over President Donald Trump's ramped-up deportation efforts amid his administration's crackdown on illegal immigration.

The Maine attorney general's office, which is investigating Monday's shooting along with the FBI, said initial statements suggest the motorist who was the target of the enforcement operation was attempting to flee in the direction of an ICE agent.

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Two immigration advocacy groups said the man who was killed was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a Social Security number.

The shooting in Maine came three days after Platner ended his campaign amid mounting controversies and allegations of sexual misconduct that he had repeatedly denied, and a chorus of calls from top Democrats in Maine, the nation's capital, and across the country to drop out of the race immediately.

A populist Democrat who was backed last September by progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders, Platner was challenging longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a high-profile, combustible and expensive race in Maine, which is one of a handful that will determine if the GOP holds onto its slim Senate majority in November's midterm elections.

Seven Democrats have filed to run for the nomination, which will be determined by roughly 600 voting delegates at a July 25 convention held by the Maine Democratic Party.

Collins said in a statement following the shooting that "a full and impartial investigation of what happened" was needed.

Hours later, Collins said in another statement that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin "informed me that the Boston office of the DHS Inspector General has taken over the investigation of the Biddeford shooting in cooperation with the FBI."

One of Collins' Senate offices is located in Biddeford, and protesters marched to the office to chant, "Vote her out."