Rockland City Council enacts immigration ordinance; effective in 30 days

"not a punishment or a negative reflection of the PD, but a way to provide an absolute protection for every officer and every City employee"

Mon, 12/08/2025 - 9:48pm

Sarah Thompson

ROCKLAND — “Let us send a clear, powerful message, once again,” said Councilor Kaitlin Callahan. “Rockland stands with all of its residents. We will protect our community, and we will protect those who serve it and protect it. And once again, show that we will never be governed by fear. Not today, not tomorrow, and not ever.”

A Rockland ordinance limiting City employees’ engagement with Immigration officials has been approved and will go into effect in 30 days, along with a corresponding order that directs the City Manager to create policies, procedures, and training to manage the ordinance.

Rockland City Council voted 4-1 (Kalloch) in support of the ordinance, following a last-minute amendment, which added a new section. Section F: “Enforcement of state and local criminal laws.” Nothing in this ordinance shall be construed to limit any City employees from enforcing state and local criminal law, even if such enforcement takes place at the scene of federal immigration enforcement operations.

That brief addition, according Michael Kebede, Policy Director for ACLU of Maine, was designed to address Rockland Police Chief Tim Carroll’s draft language concerns. Councilor Nicole Kalloch said she’d been in correspondence with Carroll, despite his absence from this meeting, Dec. 8, 2025. And, according to Kalloch, Carroll still does not agree with the language drafted in this ordinance. During the Dec. 1, Agenda-setting meeting, Carroll had entered a request to postpone this vote so that he could attend and be a part of the discussion. However, ordinance sponsor Councilor Kaitlin Callahan met with Carroll on Dec. 4, and according to Callahan, Carroll retracted his postponement request. Kalloch stated that following months of discussion, Carroll, along with many others, “just wanted this over with.”

Callahan praised Carroll and the officers of the Rockland Police Department, and said that this ordinance is not a punishment or a negative reflection of the PD, but a way to provide an absolute protection for every officer and every City employee.

“It prevents our officers from ever being put in an impossible position where they must chose between upholding the values of our community, and cooperating with federal agencies whose mission at this time and in this context does not align with trust building,” said Callahan.

It was created to preserve our community trust, she said.

It provides a clear legal framework, she said, and would prevent taxpayer dollars from subsidizing the operational budget of federal immigration agencies, “whose actions, are, at best, questionable,” ensuring that tax dollars serve the people of Rockland, not unconstitutional policies, she said.

“To vote yes is to affirm that we, the policy makers of Rockland, demand decency,” said Callahan. “We demand clarity for our police department and all our City staff. And most importantly, that we demand that the due process afforded by the Constitution is respected in our city limits.”

Kebede, Policy Director for ACLU of Maine, clarified that this ordinance does not keep ICE out of Rockland.

“It would simply disentangle some of the City operations from federal immigration enforcement,” he said. “And that’s the goal. It’s a modest goal. It’s not intended to stop ICE or keep ICE away. And so, I’m sorry if anything I’ve said has led you to think that we think that this ordinance would keep ICE away.”

As Chief Carroll said in June, immigration goes by many names: ICE, Border Patrol, military, Coast Guard, FBI, and more.

In June, Kalloch had expressed resistence toward a Council telling law enforcement how to do their jobs. In the same vein, she recognized that Coast Guard is also a form of law enforcement, and that the Coast Guard might take strong offense to this proposed ordinance – potentially trying to tell them how to do their jobs. Would the Coast Guard leave the city? Kalloch reminded Council prior to this ordinance vote, Dec. 8, Rockland is a Coast Guard City.

“I warned of this in June,” she said. “They were talking about the Coast Guard. Do we want to not be a Coast Guard city? That was brought up in Public Comment. Is that the goal of this council?”

Also mentioned in Public Comment was another Coast Guard city: Eugene, Oregon. Facilities were turned into ICE facilities, sometimes without anyone knowing, according to a commenter. The commenter said, “they’re targeting rural cities with Coast Guard facilities.”

Maine State Senator Pinny Beebe-Center (D-Knox) was another speaker at the meeting, which drew a packed room, and approximately 60 minutes of public speaking, though not all speakers spoke on this ordinance. State Representative Valli Geiger (D-Rockland) was also in attendance. Beebe-Center said she doesn’t often get to Rockland City Council meetings, but she and Geiger were driven to this meeting due to this ordinance, which Beebe-Center categories as of “vital importance.”

“Ordinance amendment 53 is not about attacking public servants,” she said. “It is exactly the opposite. The ordinance amendment is about protecting this community from federal agencies that have recently shown little respect for the rule of law, and for Constitutional rights. We have all heard the stories: masked men snatching a young student from a sidewalk and throwing her in a van, children coming back from school to empty homes, refugees to whom we have promised sanctuary and asylum seekers who followed the law to the letter are arrested at court where they went for routine immigration hearings. Green card holders detained in the middle of the night. There is due process, and then there is this. There is law and order, then there is this. There is respect for the Constitution, and then there is this. Rockland should take no part in this. What we are seeing is so far afield from our values that we must reject it.”

Councilors Penny York and Nate Davis praised the community for attending the meetings and participating in what turned into a "robust exercise in democracy,” according to Davis.

Perhaps in response to the ordinance proposal in June, “we collectively engaged in a quite robust discussion over the span of quite a few months now,” said Davis, “that involved everything from grand statements about the history and values of the country. Into procedural minutiae and very difficult issues of interpretation and law. Regardless of this vote, it’s been a pleasure to participate in this process.”

View the meeting here.

Reach Sarah Thompson at news@penbaypilot.com