Each year, we are featured by dozens of local, regional, and national outlets on what changes to immigration laws and policies mean and how they impact Maine’s immigration communities. You can read our recent coverage below.
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“The fear is reverberating across Maine, and so many people have completely withdrawn from public life,” Sue Roche, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, said in a statement.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.”
Advocates 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 “So many people have completely withdrawn from public life.”
“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.”
When 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?”
“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.”
Gov. Janet Mills and the mayors of Portland and Lewiston say they're bracing for a potential increase in immigration enforcement operations as soon as next week. Details remain scarce, and a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Wednesday the agency does not discuss future or potential operations.
Immigration authorities have rounded up Ecuadorian roofers from Aroostook to southern Maine since Donald Trump took office. The trend provides a window into how the president’s deportation agenda has targeted a community that has quietly shaped the region’s blue-collar economy.
The Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project has heard this fear from clients firsthand.
“People are afraid to leave their homes. They are afraid to go to work. They’re afraid to be on the roadways. They are afraid to send their children to school,” Parisio said. “They’re afraid to call the police for help in any situation, whether that’s protection from domestic violence, coming forward about labor exploitation and trafficking, serving as witnesses in criminal cases.”
The Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project confirmed to Maine Morning Star that its clients have been denied the right to have their attorneys present at appointments at the field office over the past few months, including during check-in appointments for people who are in immigration court proceedings. Arrests at such proceedings have been reported elsewhere across the country.
