Rumors that a shuttered school in Poland would house 120 minors who entered the U.S. illegally proved to be false, a federal official confirmed Wednesday.

The political hot-button issue of housing young border crossers surfaced after the governor’s office said it had tried and failed to find out whether the rumors were true.

“As recently as last week, Mary Mayhew, commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services, sent an inquiry to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services seeking information on whether such plans are in the works. So far, we have not received a response … from the federal government,” Gov. Paul LePage said in a statement Wednesday. “The Administration remains opposed to the placement of these children within Maine.”

Within hours, federal officials called Mayhew to say there are no plans to open a shelter anywhere in Maine.

“The answer is no. There is not a facility under consideration in Poland,” said Ken Wolfe, spokesman for the federal DHHS unit that runs the unaccompanied alien children program. Wolfe said DHHS never received Mayhew’s letter of Sept. 30.

The federal government has opened shelters throughout the country, and the nearest one to Maine is in Connecticut, Wolfe said.

The tens of thousands of immigrants, many of them unaccompanied children, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally this year prompted a political backlash nationally and in Maine. The wave of border crossers prompted the federal government to open shelters where they could stay until their hearings.

LePage said he didn’t want any of the young border-crossers housed in Maine, and was concerned they would be a burden to Maine taxpayers and encourage illegal immigration.

So far, there have been nine of the children staying with sponsors in Maine, usually a relative or family friend, Wolfe said.

Poland Town Manager Bradley Plante said Wednesday that the shelter rumors got started a week ago when the director of the Androscoggin Unified Emergency Management Agency told him a state Maine Emergency Management Agency employee had called about the proposal.

“(The employee) called this morning as an FYI on a proposal to (Maine) DHHS to house 120 immigrant children at the Elan School in Poland,” read the email from Director Joanne Potvin. “He said the Governor’s Office is aware of the proposal.”

Plante said he contacted the governor’s office but the administration was unaware of any plan, “so we knew the information we had was questionable.”

But by then he had notified the school board and school superintendent, and word was spreading in the town of under 5,000 people.

“We had selectmen getting calls, people coming into the town office,” he said. “Most of the folks just wanted to know what was going on, and you can’t blame them.”

The driving force behind the idea, he discovered, was a Poland woman who had been calling various officials to get support for housing the children at the former Elan school, now owned by a veterinarian.

Plante said that when he called the woman, she told him she was “working with Senator Susan Collins’ office.” He later learned she wasn’t – she had simply called Collins’ local office to suggest the idea and “misunderstood” their response.

But, Plante said, he had already put out a statement, distributed at the selectman’s meeting Tuesday, that said the resident was working with Collins’ office. That, in turn, was included in a Sun Journal newspaper story Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Plante admitted “there’s a lot of incorrect information out there” and he’s particularly sorry the senator got dragged into it.

“Believe me, I would not have reacted to just rumors or just stories. We don’t do that,” he said. “But when I get email from the county emergency management folks I take it seriously and I react to it. That’s my job.”

The resident lobbying for the idea, and the owner of the Elan property, did not return calls seeking comment.