President Trump's swift and drastic immigration restrictions — including of longstanding legal pathways — are causing fear and confusion in immigrant communities across the country, and Maine is no exception. A flurry of unverified social media reports of immigration enforcement has also added to that climate of fear. Maine Public's Nicole Ogrysko and Ari Snider broke down what immigration lawyers and local law enforcement officials are seeing on the ground in Maine.
Nicole Ogrysko: So Ari, we've seen a lot of news recently about immigration raids in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. Are we seeing more immigration enforcement in Maine?
Ari Snider: In short, no. At least, that's what I'm hearing from immigration attorneys in Maine. I spoke with Anna Welch, she's the director of the refugee and human rights clinic at the University of Maine School of Law. Here's what she had to say:
"We have not seen an increase in terms of large numbers of arrests," Welch said. "I don't even know if there's been any substantial difference from when Biden was in office until now."
But Welch was quick to say that just because we haven't seen an increase in arrests yet, that doesn't mean we won't see an increase at some point.
Of course, the agency best positioned to answer this question would be Immigration and Customs and Enforcement, or ICE. I've reached out to the ICE office in Scarborough multiple times, and they have always referred me to a media email address that I have yet to hear back from.
So when it comes to people like Massachusetts teenager Zeneyda Barrera being held in ICE custody at the Cumberland County Jail, what's going on there?
It is also not out of the ordinary to see people in federal immigration custody being held at the jail. Sheriff Kevin Joyce told me that's been happening since the jail was built in 1992. The question is - are we seeing an increase? Sheriff Joyce said as of Thursday, the jail was holding 58 people in ICE custody, five more than they were holding the day before Trump was sworn in.
Joyce said the numbers have ticked up more noticeably since December, but of course Joe Biden was still president at that point.
Also, some of those being held at the jail for ICE were not arrested in Maine - including the teenager from Massachusetts you mentioned earlier. Joyce said that's also not out of the ordinary. But he said he told ICE that there's limited capacity at the jail for people in federal custody.
"You know, if you do a major roundup, you better check and see if we have beds," Joyce said. "Because I'm not opening another pod just to, you know, take care of that, because I have to look out for my staff as well."
So, for now, it seems we have not seen a spike in ICE arrests in Maine. But there's still a lot of fear in immigrant communities, right?
Absolutely. Anna Welch, at Maine Law, said the Trump Administration's "shock and awe" approach to immigration policy nationally has left many people in Maine very fearful, to the point where some are afraid to send their children to school. And she says that's intentional.
"That's the goal right of of this administration," she said. "To create fear among our immigrant communities. And I think it's understandable that folks are very fearful."
At the same time, social media has been flooded with unverified or unconfirmed reports of ICE activity around Maine since Trump took office. I followed up on a few of these reports recently that ICE was at schools or community colleges, and, in each case, there was nothing there. Welch said those unverified reports actually add to the panic.
"And so before spreading some of those that that information, make sure that you know the source of it, and you have the accurate information, because it's causing a lot of harm currently to our community," Welch said.
So, to summarize, from what we're seeing so far there has not been a noticeable increase in immigration arrests in Maine since Trump took office. But of course, immigration policy is changing really quickly, and it's only the second week of the Trump administration. We will continue to keep a close eye on all of this.
