Over the weekend of June 27, our Maine neighbor Dhavalkumar Patel was taken from his place of occupation while working. Mr. Patel is the owner of a grocery store and small restaurant in Friendship. Mr. Patel was behind a counter when ICE officers came into his business during working hours, handcuffed him and took him away in their vehicle. 

As we have learned since this event occurred, Mr. Patel was given no verbal or written information as to why he was being forcibly removed from his property.  There are many questions related to this assault which his family, his friends and neighbors, his customers and the general public want and deserve answers to. 

Some of these questions include the obvious: Did these officers offer identification to Mr. Patel? Were their faces masked? Did they wear name badge identification? Was their vehicle(s) marked as ICE? Were they armed and, if so, did they pull out their weapon(s) in this small family business where customers and others were present?

Then there are the obvious and overwhelming societal question: What is happening in this country, the country described historically as a Democratic Republic which, until recently, respected the rule of law and due process?  

We will, in the coming hours and days, find the answers to some of these questions. No doubt his family is out of their minds with fear over his abduction.  And this was an abduction. There is absolutely no other descriptive term.

Our Knox County Sheriff’s department would have handled the arrest of a person in a very different manner unless the arrest situation was unstable and persons were at risk of bodily harm  Per bystanders, this was not the case. 

As we have seen from many filmed and reported ICE abductions of persons all over this country, ICE follows a pattern of “snatch and run”.  Mr Patel’s business was robbed of his person.  He was abducted.  He was forcibly taken from his family, his community and, per reports, from our State of Maine to a holding facility in Plymouth, Massachusetts. 

This is ICE. We are absolutely going to assume his crime is one of being non-white and from a country of origin other than the United State of America. He may or may not be a citizen. 

We all have seen in the past months since Donald Trump began his war on non-citizen people of color that citizenship is not a question asked or respected in many cases of abduction. So we must, as a united people, who respect the rule of law and the Constitution of this United States of America, demand answers to why a tax paying beloved community member of a small Maine town was abducted in broad daylight from his owned place of business and essentially incarcerated far from home in another State.

Mr Patel is one of many of the people who live legally and sometimes illegally in our USA. Regardless, our laws are specific as to the arrest process. People are to be allowed due process including reasons for their arrest by law enforcement.  This was not an arrest in the context of due process, this was an abduction.

Senator Pinny Beebe-Center lives in Rockland and Representative Ann Matlack lives in St. George