‘Paid for the bullets’: Dem challenger hits senator with stunning ICE accusation during fiery Senate debate

Maine's Senate race turned combative Tuesday night as Republican Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson met for their third debate, with the death of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement encounter at the center of the clash. The debate fell on the three-month mark of the incident, and it showed how Democrats are using the case to argue that Collins's occasional breaks with her party have done little to restrain the Trump administration, according to Fox News.

Jackson, a former state senator, described ICE as a rogue agency and said Collins bore responsibility because she voted to fund it. In his words, she "paid for the bullets" and now wants credit for not firing. His reasoning rested on the Secure America Act, a party-line bill that extended the agency's authority through the end of Trump's term and carried about $66 billion for immigration enforcement.

That total lumps together several accounts, however. The bill allotted $26 billion to Customs and Border Protection, $38.5 to ICE and $5 billion to general Department of Homeland Security funds. Collins rejected the framing, saying her influence as a Republican senator has helped put some safeguards on an agency she called vital to Americans' safety.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →