This public service article is provided for free as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor. Please subscribe or donate to power this work. Your support, in either form, stays 100% within Maine to make our journalism possible.
The targeted federal immigration enforcement operation in Maine appeared to end how it started — with deep uncertainty.
Rumors that immigration authorities would descend on Portland and Lewiston put locals on anxious guard for days before the raid officially began on Jan. 20. For the first few days of the surge, the presence of federal agents roaming the streets transformed blocks and parking lots into impromptu scenes of protest and sometimes aggressive arrests.
On Thursday, many remained wary of an early morning announcement from U.S Sen. Susan Collins that Trump officials had told her the operation, dubbed Operation Catch of the Day, was over. Anecdotal sightings of federal agents had quieted down, but immigration advocates and public officials who had criticized federal agents’ tactics cautioned the public that federal enforcement would likely still continue as it had before the surge began.
That is one of the several unknowns that now loom over the federal government’s activity here, including what may happen to the more than 200 people that federal officials say were arrested in the first five days of the operation. Many of those immigrants were quickly shipped out of Maine to detention centers in other states, some as far away as Louisiana, and now face uncertainty about whether they’ll be released or deported.
“I was born here, raised here. I was taught that this is the land of liberty and justice, and that we had a higher moral code than this, and that was our power,” said Alex, whose husband, Marcos Da Silva was detained in Portland last week. “How are we going to recover from this?”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not officially confirmed that it had ended its operation in Maine, but it seemed to acknowledge Collins’ statement in an email.
“DHS will continue to enforce the law across the country, as we do every day,” a spokesperson said in response to questions from the Bangor Daily News, referring to four immigrants with criminal records whose arrests the agency had already promoted in a press release last week.
Sightings of federal agents have fallen since the weekend, however. A hotline run by the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition logged a notable decrease in calls over the past several days. A massive weekend snowstorm also seemed to slow enforcement efforts.
On Thursday by 3 p.m., the hotline had received 116 calls about possible sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That was down the daily high of 1,169 on Jan. 21, the second day of the operation. Thursday’s number was closer to the volume of calls the hotline received before the raid began, data shared with the BDN show.
“It’s a decrease, but not nothing. It’s not comforting,” said Panagioti Tsolkas, the organization’s spokesperson.
He expressed wariness over believing Collins’ statement the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told her that immigration agents had wound down their activity in Maine.
Federal officials also said their focus in Maine would be on catching criminals, but agents have arrested many immigrants without criminal records who were seeking asylum and had work permits. Some have reportedly been released. But many others are still detained in facilities across the country, according to a federal database. Their chances of being freed depends on a variety of factors, including whether they can obtain a lawyer, Alejandra Oliva, a spokesperson for the National Immigrant Justice Center, said.
After another major enforcement operation, “Midway Blitz,” in early September in Chicago, it was seemingly routine that people detained had a hard time gaining access to lawyers, Oliva said. Specifically, her organization found that access to bond hearings were restricted, and some were forced to sign documents agreeing to be voluntarily deported, she said. In many cases, the only way people were released from ICE’s custody was through legal intervention, Oliva said.
It was also hard for lawyers to find their clients. While there is a tool for people to look up where someone in ICE’s custody is, it would take days for it to be updated, NIJC found. Then, in some cases, people who had previously shown up in the database would suddenly disappear, despite still being in ICE’s custody.
In the cases of those detained in Maine, that’s already playing out.
It took two days for Da Silva’s wife to find him after his Jan. 20 detainment in Portland. After he first appeared in the ICE database in Massachusetts, he was moved to Louisiana and now, his whereabouts are unknown, his wife, Alex, who asked to be referred to by a nickname for privacy reasons, said.
In all that time, Da Silva’s lawyer was able to file a petition seeking his release in Massachusetts, Da Silva still hasn’t directly spoken to his lawyer, Alex said. His constant movement raises doubts that his lawyer’s petition will work.