Statement from the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP) on the First Few Days of ICE’s Operation in Maine

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 22, 2026  
CONTACT: press@ilapmaine.org  

Maine – The Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP) joins partners and communities across Maine in heartbreak but firm resolve as we respond to the terror ICE has unleashed on our state. The operation, depravedly named “Operation Catch of the Day,” began on January 20. According to a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, ICE arrested 50 Maine residents in their first day of the operation and have 1,400 “targets” in Maine. 

While ILAP cannot confirm the exact number of arrests so far, we are receiving rapid-fire reports, photos, and videos of ICE activity, and requests for legal help. Some of the reports of ICE operation activity and arrests that have come to ILAP so far are from Biddeford, South Portland, Portland, Westbrook, Lewiston, and the ICE facility in Scarborough.  
 
ILAP’s Executive Director Sue Roche said: “While some of the door-to-door and apartment building raids may be targeted, it is clear the overall operation is anything but targeted. People are being racially profiled on the streets and in their cars. As is their playbook, ICE is doing everything they can to inflict maximum cruelty and chaos.” 

While ILAP does not have complete information on all people who have been arrested in the first days of the operation, we can confirm that many of the people arrested have no criminal record. We can also confirm that many of the people who have been detained are asylum seekers, following a lawful process. 

Some of the Maine people arrested in the first days of ICE’s operation include a single mother who had just dropped a child off at school, a worker who had just gotten off the night shift at a Home Depot, and a father who was profiled and pulled over while driving with his wife and one-month old baby. ICE smashed his window after he pleaded with them to be careful because there was a newborn in the car. A pregnant woman reached out to ILAP terrified to leave her home to go to a medical appointment. Another called and said someone had pulled the fire alarm in her building, desperately trying to save people from ICE. Teachers escorting immigrant kids home from school had ICE follow them and push their way into an apartment building lobby.   

At this time, ILAP is seeing arrested people swiftly transferred out of the state to facilities in New England. We expect many could be moved a second time to more remote detention facilities, as has been the pattern in the Minneapolis operation. We are monitoring closely. 

ILAP is sharing the following message regarding accessing legal help:

If you know of a person who has been detained by ICE in Maine and are directly in touch with their closest point of contact, please help them fill out the form on this page immediately. Filling out the form immediately is crucial to helping people access legal help before a transfer out of state, which may happen in as little as a few hours.  Please do not fill out the form if you do not have information about how attorneys can contact their closest point of contact. 
 
ILAP will work to share additional information with the press in the coming days.