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The mayors of Maine’s two largest cities say they believe federal immigration agents will soon arrive.
Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline issued a statement to media outlets saying it is his “understanding” that there will be U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the ground in the city soon. Shortly after, Portland Mayor Mark Dion issued a similar statement that said he expects ICE to be in the city next week.
“Our community is anxious and fearful regarding the understanding that ICE is planning to send agents to Portland and Lewiston next week. We are a welcoming city,” Dion, a former Cumberland County sheriff, said. “While we respect the law, we challenge the need for a paramilitary approach to the enforcement of federal statutes.”
Similarly, Sheline said he understands the news comes at a difficult time for his community.
“I understand that this is an unsettling time for many of our residents. Lewiston is a strong city and we care about our community and each other,” his statement said. “Please check on your neighbors and stay safe.”
Neither Sheline’s statement nor Dion’s offered further details as to how they got this information. There has been consistent but targeted enforcement across Maine since Trump took office, but the mayors’ extraordinary moves to raise the possibility of increased action comes at a tense time for the Somali community on the heels of intense enforcement in Minnesota.
Spokespeople for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The announcements came a day after President Donald Trump’s administration announced that it would end temporary protected status for Somali immigrants. Maine has a Somali community that has been growing in power and prominence in recent years. It is centered in Lewiston and Portland and took root in the early 2000s. Most of them were either born in the U.S. or have become citizens.
That move was the latest for the Trump administration in the wake of a federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, which followed nearly 100 federal prosecutions of people in welfare and Medicaid fraud schemes. Those cases largely centered on the large Somali community there. An immigration agent shot and killed a woman in her car there last week, leading to national protests against the Republican president’s policies.
Immigration authorities visited Lewiston last month, posting pictures of Homeland Security Investigations agents visiting the Lewiston office of Gateway Community Services, an immigrant health care provider that Maine suspended payments to last month while alleging more than $1 million in interpreter fraud.
MaineCare providers based in Lewiston and Portland have been at the center of widespread allegations of fraud within the state’s version of Medicaid in recent weeks and months. Reporting in May from The Maine Wire, the media arm of the conservative Maine Policy Institute, led Republican lawmakers to call for more investigations and further scrutiny of the state’s payments via MaineCare for interpreting services.
Those calls have intensified in recent weeks following the state’s pause in payments to Gateway. Last week, Republicans on the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee filed a request to investigate alleged fraud against MaineCare vendors.
It also follows a series of Bangor Daily News articles, including one examining a 2021 report from an investigator outlining a suspicious billing pattern for interpreter services, especially among providers working with the state’s Somali community, that indicated widespread fraud within the MaineCare system.
Another, focused on the quiet federal prosecution of three people tied to the Lewiston-based Bright Future Healthier You, for allegedly trying to defraud the federal government. The mental health organization that was the largest biller of MaineCare for interpreting services in the last 10 years.
BDN writer Callie Ferguson contributed to this report.