Two Men Held on ICE Detainers at Hancock County Jail After Arrest in Bar Harbor

Aug 07, 2025

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BAR HARBOR—Drug arrests in Bar Harbor have led to two men being held on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers at Hancock County Jail.

According to a Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Police Department press release and court documents, on Sunday, August 3, two men were arrested by Officer Ted Cake and Officer Shelby O’Neil for alleged unlawful possession of scheduled drugs, class C and alleged refusing to submit to arrest or detention, class E.

Mohamed Eytah, 20, of Collinsville, Illinois, and Cheikh Hmeimed, 25, of Brooklyn, New York, were both charged with the identical offenses after a call from the Best Western Hotel at 452 Route 3 in Bar Harbor.

A Best Western employee contacted the Bar Harbor Police Department at approximately 12:18 p.m., on Sunday, and reported that two parties, one party of a man and a woman, and one party of two men, were refusing to leave their two different rooms after checkout. The hotel also reported that the two parties claimed not to be together, but they had all filled out the same vehicle information on their guest registration cards.

When Officer O’Neil arrived, she saw two men sitting outside of a room with plastic bags. There was also a third man speaking with the two men and he began to walk away upon seeing Officer O’Neil driving up. Officer O’Neil told the men to stay where they were and went to speak with the third man.

Officer Cake arrived and, along with Officer O’Neil, was speaking with the third man and a woman who together constituted the second party who was reported to have been refusing to leave the hotel. The man and the woman agreed to pack up and leave their room, which they did after being told not to return to the hotel and that they were officially trespassed from the hotel.

Officer O’Neil then went to speak with the two other men and discovered that they had taken the plastic bags and left the area. A hotel housekeeper told Officer O’Neil that she had seen the men run into the woods. The officers could not locate the two men who had fled after being told to remain where they were.

According to a police report and a photocopied identification card from one of the men, they are both from the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, a country in northwest Africa.

After updating hotel staff on the situation, the officers left. Shortly after the officers left, the Best Western called the police department back and said that the two men had been spotted on the hotel’s property near the maintenance shed and employee housing area.

Officer O’Neil was driving back to the hotel when she saw the two men run across Route 3 toward the nearby Bar Harbor Campground and a stopped Island Explorer bus.

Officer O’Neil ordered both men to stop, one of whom eventually did, but the other one continued onto the bus. Upon arriving at the bus, Officer O’Neil ordered the man off the bus and he did. Officer Cake then arrived back in the area.

The two men were detained and searched. Officers located Narcan in Hmeimed’s pocket.

The sequence of events that started when the men left the hotel room area after being told to remain there by Officer O’Neil to the time that both men were back in the presence of police at the Bar Harbor Campground is why they were charged with refusing to submit to arrest or detention.

Maine statute 17-A, section 751-A, paragraph 1, subsection B, says that it is a crime if a person “refuses to stop on request or signal of a law enforcement officer. Violation of this paragraph is a class E crime.”

While officers were speaking with the two men, an independent witness approached an officer and reported that they had seen one of the men throw something into some bushes. Upon searching the bushes, Officer O’Neil located a small plastic bag that contained a quantity of various types of pills.

Some of those pills were identifiable as prescription oxycodone.

Maine statute 17-A, section 1107-A, paragraph B, subsection 4, says, “Oxycodone and the amount possessed is more than 200 milligrams” constitutes unlawful possession of scheduled W drugs, which both men were charged with.

The two men were arrested and transported to the Hancock County Jail.

After the officers were finished at the jail, Officer Cake met with a Maine Drug Enforcement Agent (MDEA) who tested a sample of all of the different pills that had been in the bag.

According to the MDEA agent’s report, there were twelve and a half pills. One and a half of those pills appeared to be the same and a sample of the one and half pills tested positive for oxycodone. Five of the pills appeared to be the same and a sample of those five similar pills tested positive for fentanyl.

The rest of the pills tested as non-narcotics.

Both men were arraigned on Monday, August 4, and given $10,000 cash bail. According to Hancock County Jail Assistant Administrator Frank Shepard, as of 1 p.m., August 6, neither man had made bail and they were still at the Hancock County Jail.

According to court documents, both men have been assigned court-appointed attorneys. The reasons given on the court appointment form are:

“Because the defendant/petitioner is indigent AND:
“There is a risk of jail if the defendant/petitioner is convicted of any of the above referenced offenses.
“The accused is a noncitizen for whom the criminal proceeding poses a risk of adverse immigration consequences.”

Both men have an ICE detainer issued for them according to Shepard. That detainer means that if the men make bail, they will still be held at the jail.

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