A police department in a Maine resort town said that a reserve officer who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week received approval from the federal government to work for the department in May.
ICE accused the police department of “knowingly” hiring an immigrant who is in the country illegally, which the police chief denies.
ICE arrested Jon Luke Evans, a summer reserve officer with the Old Orchard Beach Police Department, on Friday, according to a statement from the agency released Monday.
The agency said that Evans had unlawfully attempted to purchase a firearm, triggering an alert with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which worked with ICE to make the arrest.
ICE said that Evans is a Jamaican citizen who lawfully entered the U.S. on a visa on Sept. 24, 2023, and he was supposed to depart on Oct. 1, 2023, but never boarded his flight, overstaying his visa. It was not immediately clear if Evans had an attorney.
The Old Orchard Beach Police Department said in a statement on Monday that as part of its standard hiring process, Evans completed an I-9 federal immigration and work authorization form to verify that he was legally able to work in the U.S.
Police Chief Elise Chard said in the statement that the town reviewed multiple forms of identification and submitted the forms for Evans to the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify Program. The system is operated by the Department of Homeland Security in partnership with the Social Security Administration to let employers know if a prospective employee has legal authorization to work in the U.S.
“The Department of Homeland Security then verified that Evans was authorized to work in the U.S.,” Chard said. “The form was submitted and approved by DHS on May 12, 2025.”
“Evans would not have been permitted to begin work as a reserve officer until and unless Homeland Security verified his status,” she said.
“In Old Orchard Beach, reserve police officers are part-time, seasonal employees who must meet the same background checks, pass the same physical agility tests, and receive the same medical evaluations as full-time police officers,” Chard said.
Maine is one of about a dozen states that allow noncitizens to work in law enforcement. Some of those states require the immigrant to be a green-card holder, while others, such as Maine, require the immigrant to be legally authorized to work in the U.S.
ICE disparaged the police department in a statement.
“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,” ICE’s acting field office director in Boston, Patricia Hyde, said in the statement. “We have a police department that was knowingly breaking the very law they are charged with enforcing in order to employ an illegal alien.”
Chard said the police department “takes its legal responsibilities very seriously, and takes great care to follow the laws that we are tasked with enforcing. 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.”
“We intend to investigate this matter to determine what other steps we should take moving forward to ensure our continued compliance with all applicable laws,” she said.
ICE said that Evans told ICE officers that he had tried to buy the firearm for his job as a police officer with the Old Orchard Beach Police Department.
Chard said reserve officers receive firearms training and are issued a firearm, but must turn their firearms in at the end of each shift and reserve officers “are not requested to, nor are they allowed to purchase or carry any other firearms for the performance of their duties.”
She said that reserve officers have a lengthy probationary period and that the department will conduct an internal review of the circumstances and that Evans’ probation status is under review.
Maine has some 34,000 immigrant workers, or 4.6% of the state’s labor force, according to the American Immigration Council. There are also an estimated 5,800 unauthorized immigrants of working age in the state, according to the council.
