“The fear is reverberating across Maine, and so many people have completely withdrawn from public life,” Sue Roche, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, said in a statement. “There is no guarantee an ICE surge or operation will not happen again, and the increased enforcement in Maine since the beginning of the Trump administration has been devastating in and of itself.”
Read MoreAdvocates said they were still trying to locate and free people who had been taken out of Maine. “We have a lot of work and rebuilding ahead,” Sue Roche, director of the Portland-based Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, said in a statement. “So many people have completely withdrawn from public life.”
Read More“There are not adequate words to describe how difficult the past week has been,” Sue Roche, ILAP’s executive director, said in a statement. “In ILAP’s legal triage, we are seeing mostly people in lawful immigration processes with no criminal records being arrested. Many have been racially profiled and abducted from their cars off the street, and some have been targeted at home. ICE is stalking grocery stores and schools. The lack of due process or humanity in this enforcement operation is appalling.”
Read MoreWhen a class in Portland went out for recess on Thursday, their teacher recalled, some of the 6-year-old students anxiously asked, “What about the ICE people?”
Read More“It is clear the overall operation is anything but targeted,” said Sue Roche, ILAP’s executive director. “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.”
Read More“It Can’t Happen Here” is considered a dystopian novel published in 1935 by American journalist and author Sinclair Lewis, set in Vermont. It follows a populist politician who quickly rises to power to become the United States first outright dictator and the courageous newspaper editor who sees the politician’s fascist policies for what they are and becomes an ardent critic. It’s compared to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Nazi Germany and some say mirrors the current political climate in the United States now.”
Read More“While Maine’s state and local resources should not be wasted to investigate immigration status in any case, many of those impacted were known to be in a lawful immigration process, have a valid work permit, and no criminal record,” Executive Director Sue Roche said in a statement.
Read More“The reality is people are being essentially disappeared and are picked up roadside and their whereabouts may be unknown for days at a time,” Melissa Brennan, co-legal director of Maine’s Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, told Maine Public. ICE is also executing a deliberate strategy of moving detainees out of state and even out of the country to prevent them from accessing community or legal support, she and others have pointed out.
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