Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced the rescindment of Title 42, effective May 23. Established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it gave immigration authorities the power to turn away migrants and asylum seekers at the U.S. border because of the public health crisis. However, some Republican governors are less than pleased.

On April 6, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that his state would be providing charter buses to transport local migrants to Washington, D.C. Abbott cited the “illegal immigrants who are being dropped off by the Biden administration” in Texas as his impetus for this program. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, refusing to have his own xenophobia be overshadowed, made a similar statement hours later: “If (President) Biden is dumping people, which he has dumped people … we now have money where we can reroute them to sanctuary states like Delaware.”

Cumberland County has been called a “sanctuary jurisdiction” because it won’t comply with immigration detainer requests without probable cause. If Texas and Florida are truly so overwhelmed by migrants, why are Abbott and DeSantis not sending people to Maine? Threatening to send people to Washington and Biden’s home state, Delaware, is nothing more than a classless act of partisanship and an attempt to sit in the national spotlight.

Maine is a politically divided state. But we have remained remarkably considerate and kind despite the example being set by the rest of the nation. Now, more than ever, Mainers must show America what it means to be respectful and tolerant: “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”

Skylar Bennett
Yarmouth