Ahmadov Out: Janet Mills’ Azeri Migrant Office Director

Following a Maine Wire investigation into the man Gov. Janet Mills (D) tapped to run her controversial migrant resettlement office, the Director of the “Office of New Americans” (ONA), Tarlan Ahmadov, has had his profile scrubbed from the governor’s website.

In February, when Gov. Mills issued a lengthy press release praising Ahmadov and commending him for his work in diversity, equity, and inclusion with migrant populations, his photograph and bio appeared prominently on the web page for the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF), a collection of political insiders led by GOPIF Director Hannah Pingree.

Now, however, Ahmadov is suddenly missing from the GOPIF website, and only policy advisor Ekhlas Ahmed’s profile appears.

Gov. Mills has refused to respond to the Maine Wire’s repeated inquiries about Ahmadov’s racist posts, as well as the administration’s apparently anemic vetting process for selecting the Azeri nationalist to run an office aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

But the deletion of Ahmadov’s profile from the “Team” page of Pingree’s GOPIF can only mean one thing: Ahmadov has resigned — or been forced to resign.

The only question is whether the Mills Administration will manufacture some reason as to why Ahmadov was ousted, as opposed to admitting the truth.

Ahmadov’s removal from the website comes even before the ONA was to have its first meeting on April 14th.

The ONA’s first meeting has now been suddenly rescheduled to June 4 — another indication that a major change — like Ahmadov’s ouster — has come about.

Ahmadov’s Soviet-style excision from the governor’s staff website—and his likely exit from the cushy ONA gig—unquestionably resulted from the Maine Wire’s exclusive reporting, not only on his anti-Armenian diatribes but also on his alleged work as an unregistered foreign agent for the government of Azerbaijan.

That work on behalf of the Azeri government included arranging a mysterious luxury trip for several Democratic state lawmakers, a Cumberland County probate judge, and Abdullahi Ali, a Somali-American refugee who recently failed in his bid to become the new militant leader of Jubaland, Somalia.

Ahmadov’s downfall came after months of reporting that exposed a disturbing record, including:

• Social media posts labeling Armenians as “occupants” of the western United States due to the large population of Armenian-Americans in California and the Pacific North West
• Posts praising military crackdowns in Nagorno-Karabakh and caricaturing famed Armenian Kim Kardashian as a horned devil
• A junket he orchestrated for Maine lawmakers to Azerbaijan — funded by the same regime alleged to have engaged in ethnic cleansing in the Nagorno-Karabakh region
• Financial entanglements and a lavish lifestyle, including photos from an Italian lakeside resort while controversy swirled back home.
• An attempt to suppress Armenian academic voices in Maine, according to multiple community leaders.

The Mills Administration, Ahmadov, and several Democratic elected officials have also ignored the Maine Wire’s repeated inquiries about a junket Ahmadov organized last year at the behest of the Azerbaijani government.

According to campaign finance disclosures, Ahmadov brought Rep. Deqa Dhalac (D-South Portland), Rep. Mana Abdi (D-Lewiston), and Sen. Jill Duson (D-Cumberland) on a trip to Turkey and Azerbaijan.

When the Maine Wire reported exclusively on Ahmadov’s history of posting racist, anti-Armenian commentary and cartoons on social media, Ahmadov initially changed the location settings for his @TarlanAhmadov X account to “Maineville, Ohio” before deleting the account altogether.

The initial report prompted an outcry from Armenian-Mainers who questioned whether an individual with a brazen disdain for a particular ethnic minority could credibly lead an office designed to assist ethnic minorities in Maine.

Armenian Cultural Association of Maine President Gerard Kiladjian wrote to Gov. Mills calling for Ahmadov to be removed as ONA Director.

“As an Armenian resident of Maine and the leader of the Armenian Cultural Association of Maine, I find it deeply troubling that someone with a documented history of anti-Armenian rhetoric and advocacy against an immigrant community is serving in a position meant to foster inclusion and diversity,” Kiladjian wrote.

“Mr. Ahmadov’s public statements and actions reveal a clear pattern of bias and hostility toward Armenians,” he said. “His social media posts have included inflammatory statements labeling Armenia as an ‘occupier and aggressor’ and mocking the Armenian diaspora.”

Kiladjian said that Ahmadov’s rhetoric is “not only inappropriate but directly contradicts the ONA’s mission to support and uplift all immigrant communities in Maine.”

Armenian critics of Ahmadov pointed not only to his overtly racist social media posts but also to a resolution he attempted to get passed with the Portland City Council in 2021. The resolution sought to recognize February 26 as “Khojaly Remembrance Day,” referencing a 1992 event in which hundreds of Azerbaijani civilians were killed by Armenian and Soviet forces. The language of the proclamation described the killings as a “genocide.”

The move immediately drew sharp backlash from Maine’s Armenian-American community, which argued that the proclamation was riddled with historical inaccuracies and amounted to propaganda on behalf of the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments.

Upon learning more about the resolution and its historical context, the then-Mayor of Portland, Kate Snyder, scuttled Ahmadov’s subtle Azeri influence campaign.

Despite his open and overt track record of denigrating Armenians, Ahmadov somehow managed to secure not only a high-paying government job in the Mills Administration but also endorsements from well-known figures in Maine politics.

When Mills first announced Ahmadov’s appointment to run the migrant resettlement office, the choice was heralded by a who’s who of Mills’ favorite political insiders, including Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman, Maine State Chamber of Commerce CEO Patrick Woodcock, Catholic Charities of Maine CEO Steve Letourneau, Prosperity Maine Executive Director Claude Rwaganje, Executive Director at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP) Sue Roche, Maine Community College System President David Daigler, Ben Waxman, CEO and Co-Founder of American Roots in Westbrook, Betsy Biemann, CEO of Coastal Enterprises, Inc., Mufalo Chitam, Executive Director of Maine Immigrants Rights Coalition, Marpheen Chann, Executive Director of Khmer Maine, Zoe Sahloul, Executive Director, New England Arab American Organization, Kerem Durdag, CEO of GWI, and Melissa Skahan, Vice President, Mission Integration and Support Services of Northern Light Mercy Hospital.

Ahmadov’s sudden joblessness is an embarrassing development for those who vouched on his behalf, especially considering that he scarcely tried to hide his vehement disdain for a particular ethnic minority.

Perhaps the most mysterious part of the whole Ahmadov appointment, though, is why the migrant resettlement specialist would take Rep. Dhalac, his longtime friend Rep. Abdi, Sen. Duson, and Gateway Community Services Executive Director Abdullahi Ali on a junket to Turkey and Azerbaijan, including an area of the country that was inhabited mostly by Armenians until 2020, when the Azeri military forcefully displaced the Armenian population in what was arguably a modern ethnic cleansing.

Instagram photos documenting the luxury junket, including those posted by the Democratic elected officials and Ali, show that the cadre of “New Mainers” visited the Nagorno-Karabakh region, taking glamour shots in front of Armenian churches that are now abandoned due to the forced displacement of the Armenian Christians who once worshipped at them.

Adding even more intrigue to the saga is Abdullahi Ali’s presence on the foreign junket.

At the time of the trip, Ali was simultaneously running a Portland-based migrant services agency that bills MaineCare roughly $5 million per year, running for president of Jubaland, the semi-autonomous southern state of Somalia, and, according to claims he made in an interview with Kenyan media, helping to fund armed paramilitary groups in the region.

Although Mills’ migrant resettlement office appears to have shed one controversial figure, the ONA’s remaining employee, policy advisor Ekhlas Ahmed, has also made past comments that call into question whether the office will aim to promote the interests of Maine taxpayers or the interests of foreign governments.

In comments reported exclusively by the Maine Wire, Ahmed once denied that there was any reason for non-citizens who find safe haven in Maine to bother with assimilation, and stated that she would “fight for Sudan” while living and working in Maine.

The direction the ONA has taken almost immediately will come as little surprise to those familiar with the comments of Rep. Dhalac, a Somali-American refugee who introduced the legislation in the 131st Legislature upon which the office is based.

Dhalac, in addition to serving as the Assistant Executive Director at Gateway Community Services, has repeatedly said publicly that non-citizens who have arrived in Maine seeking asylum should receive preference over native-born citizens, including military veterans.

Like with most developments that are embarrassing for the Mills Administration, the governor’s office will likely avoid mentioning what actually happened with Ahmadov and why his tenure at ONA was so brief.

Likewise, the development will probably go unnoticed by the various websites in Maine that purport to publish news. Multiple sources within the migrant community have told the Maine Wire that their attempts to garner interest in Ahmadov’s anti-Armenian record from news outlets like the Portland Press Herald have fallen on deaf ears.

As of Tuesday evening, the Maine Wire was the only outlet to have covered the controversy surrounding Ahmadov’s hiring. Although the George Soros-funded Press Herald and the taxpayer-funded MainePublic.org both covered his initial appointment, neither outlet has written about him since.