Taxpayers Paid $2M to Pro-Illegal Alien Group Staging "Abolish ICE" Rallies in Portland
Presente! Maine was created explicitly to hoover up taxpayer money during COVID-19 and push left-wing policies. Now, the NGO is rallying against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
You might not agree with the “ABOLISH ICE” message these protesters brought to a federal courthouse in Portland, Maine, but if you’re reading this newsletter, you likely contributed to its occurrence through your taxes.
That’s because Presente! Maine, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit behind Sunday’s pro-illegal immigration rally, is almost entirely funded by state and federal taxpayers, including through no-bid contracts awarded by Governor Janet Mills (D), according to public documents reviewed by The Robinson Report.
Since the pro-illegal immigration, anti-President Donald Trump group formed in 2022, it has received substantial government funding, including $419,724 in 2022 and $1,424,520 in 2023, according to the most recent publicly available Form 990 tax documents. Those levels of self-reported government funding would amount to basically the entire budget for the organization in those years.
Contract documents from Maine’s Department of Administrative and Financial Services (DAFS) provide further details about the flow of taxpayer money into the left-wing activist organization.
The contracts show that, beginning months before Gov. Janet Mills 2022 re-election, the Mills Administration pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars from federal COVID-19 allocations into the young organization.
Those contracts were awarded through a no-bid, non-competitive process based on the theory that untrained nonprofit employees would somehow become valuable public health assets. In practice, the contracts paid community organizers to enroll Maine residents in MaineCare and other welfare programs.
One of the largest sources of taxpayer funding for Presente! Maine was the Community Health Outreach Worker (CHOW) program, the same initiative through which the Mills Administration funded Gateway Community Services, a nonprofit accused by a former employee of fraudulently billing Medicaid for at least five years.
Coincidentally, Presente! Maine received all its no-bid contracts from the Mills Administration at the same address as Gateway Community Services: 501 Forest Ave in Portland.
Like Presente Maine, Gateway Community Services received significant taxpayer funding beginning in early 2022 to help predominantly migrant communities sign up for various welfare programs.
Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA)—commonly known as the “Motor Voter Act”—as well as Maine Title 21‑A, § 181, government welfare offices are required to offer welfare enrollees assistance with registering to vote when they sign up for benefits.
In other words, the Mills Administration awarded taxpayer funds to both organizations under the same "public health" program, located at the same address in Portland. The contracted work described would effectively increase voter registration among welfare recipients in Maine’s cities.
Mills is the law in Maine, our own Banana Republic!
No bid contracts! Is there anything they can't do?