Joe Scarborough criticized Republican Sen. Susan Collins for her role in supplying tens of billions of dollars in new funding for President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement in light of the fatal shooting by federal authorities of a 26-year-old Colombian immigrant in Collins’ home state of Maine — the second fatal shooting involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in a week.

Joan Sebastian Guerrero was killed by immigration agents in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday morning while he was on his way to work. Authorities later revealed he was not the target of the warrant agents were trying to execute.

On Tuesday’s “Morning Joe,” Scarborough blasted Collins and her fellow conservatives for effectively co-signing what he said was the federal government “killing people in the streets of America.” In doing so, the former Republican congressman accused the party of abandoning values it once held most dear, including its staunch opposition to government overreach.

“When people like me started running,” Scarborough, who represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District from 1995 to 2001, recalled, “everywhere I went, I wanted to talk about ‘Well, the flat tax is more —’ they wanted to talk about Ruby Ridge. They wanted to talk about the ATF killing families that had guns.”

At the time, he said the Gadsden flag, which depicts a coiled rattlesnake and the phrase “Don’t Tread on Me” became a popular symbol of that opposition.

“‘Don’t tread on me.’ Are you kidding me? If you support this administration, take that sign down, because that’s exactly what federal agents are doing,” he argued. “They’re gunning Americans down in the streets. They’re killing citizens in the streets. They’re killing immigrants in the streets of America.”

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Allison Detzel

Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”