ICE arrests Old Orchard Beach, Maine Police Officer Jon-Luke Evans, but his department claims DHS cleared him to serve
The ICE arrest of a police officer in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, who the agency claims was in the country unlawfully, has sparked a days-long exchange of blame between the resort town's police department and DHS.
ICE says agents arrested Jon-Luke Evans, a Jamaican national, on July 25 after he allegedly attempted to unlawfully purchase a gun. The attempted purchase "triggered an alert to ATF agents, who worked in coordination with ICE to make the arrest," ICE said. Evans allegedly told ICE he was trying to purchase the weapon as part of his employment with the Old Orchard Beach Police Department.
ICE has strongly condemned the police department for hiring Evans, claiming that he entered the country lawfully on September 24, 2023, but overstayed his visa when he failed to depart a week later.
"The fact that a police department would hire an illegal alien and unlawfully issue him a firearm while on duty would be comical if it weren't so tragic. We have a police department that was knowingly breaking the very law they are charged with enforcing in order to employ an illegal alien," said ICE ERO Boston acting field office director Patricia Hyde in a statement.
But Police Chief Elise Chard says DHS had cleared Evans to work as a police officer.
"In hiring Evans, our department and our community relied on the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify program to ensure we were meeting our obligations, and we are distressed and deeply concerned about this apparent error on the part of the federal government," she said in a statement.
"DHS informed the Police Department that Evans was authorized to work and had an Employment Authorization Document that did not expire until March 2030," she added.
Chief Chard says Evans was hired as a part-time summer reserve officer in May and completed the standard hiring process, which included background checks, submitting immigration forms to DHS, and undergoing the standard training and physical agility tests as all full-time police officers.
However, in a statement released by the police department, the police chief said that while reserve officers are issued a firearm, they are not allowed to bring the firearm home and are not allowed to purchase their own firearm to use as part of their employment.
In the state of Maine, some noncitizens who are in the country legally are allowed to work as law enforcement officers.
ABC News has not independently verified Evans' immigration status. DHS did not respond to a request for documentation that proved Evans was in the country unlawfully, nor did it respond when asked what kind of visa he was issued.
"Usage of E-Verify does not absolve employers of their legal duty to verify documentation authenticity, and all employers should take necessary steps to effectively verify legal employment status. The Old Orchard Beach Police Department's reckless reliance on E-Verify to justifyarmingan illegal alien, Jon Luke Evans violates federal law, and does not absolve them of their failure to conduct basic background checks to verify legal status," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Old Orchard Beach Town Manager Diana Asanza defended the police department's hiring practices.
"Today, the Department of Homeland Security doubled down on its attack, but in doing so has thrown its own electronic verification system into question. If we should not trust the word of the federal computer system that verifies documents and employment eligibility, what good is that system?" she said in a statement.
ABC News has reviewed documents released by the city that are part of the 153-page personnel file it says it compiled as part of the hiring process.
A resume belonging to Evans purports to show his work experience going back to October 2020, when he said he was a teaching assistant at the College of Agriculture, Science, and Education in Portland, Jamaica.
It also shows a four-month stint at a Waffle House in South Carolina from May 2022 to September 2022, over a year before DHS claims he entered the country lawfully.
DHS did not respond to questions about the employment history.
In his resume, Evans said he's a trained agricultural educator and was "seeking to transition my skills in problem-solving, critical thinking and environmental conservation to a career in law enforcement, where I can make a positive impact on society."
Chief Chard said ICE had not alerted her about his arrest and that she learned about it through a press release.
"Any insinuation that the Town and Department were derelict in our efforts to verify Mr. Evans' eligibility to work for the Town is false and appears to be an attempt to shift the blame onto a hard-working local law enforcement agency that has done its job," she said in a statement.
