Through July of this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested 488 people in Maine, according to federal data obtained and published by the Deportation Data Project. That’s already well above the total for all of last year, when the agency detained 315 people in the state.
Over 42% of this year’s ICE arrests took place in January, when the agency launched its so-called Operation Catch of the Day, sweeping up many residents who had no criminal record and who were pursuing lawful immigration pathways.
But the state has also seen a notable increase in detentions over the summer, which was also marked by the fatal ICE shooting of 25-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Biddeford this July.
Because ICE does not make detention statistics readily available, the Deportation Data Project numbers — obtained through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits — paint the clearest picture to date of the agency’s operations in Maine during the second Trump administration.
An analysis of the data shows the surge in arrests in Maine this year is being driven by increased targeting of people with no criminal records.
In fact, the number of people without criminal records arrested by ICE in Maine has jumped 161% through July 2026, compared with all of 2025. Only Vermont and Montana saw greater increases.
Of those detained who do have criminal records, most are for nonviolent crimes. So far this year, ICE has arrested only one person in Maine with a conviction for a violent crime, despite the agency’s repeated claim to be targeting the “worst of the worst.”
What happens after those arrests varies widely. Many of those detained during the federal enforcement surge in January, for example, were later released, either on bond or on a court order. But as the new data show, ICE also has deported about a third of the people it has detained in Maine since last year.
As previous reporting has indicated, ICE arrests have been concentrated in Greater Portland, Lewiston-Auburn and Biddeford, but also have reached into more parts of the state.
It’s important to note that Border Patrol arrests were not included in this dataset, meaning it does not include several large-scale detentions of farmworkers in Skowhegan earlier this year.
The citizenship of people arrested by ICE this year reflects recent immigration trends in the state, with a high concentration of people from Central Africa, Central America and South America.
The Angolan community has had the highest number of residents arrested by ICE under the second Trump administration. That community has grown significantly in recent years, largely due to the arrival of people seeking asylum. And, increasingly, immigration lawyers say ICE appears to be targeting asylum-seekers who entered the country on temporary visas.
The spike in ICE arrests this year has taken a growing toll on communities and families.
“Behind every data point is a person, a family, and a community living with fear and uncertainty,” Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, said in a written statement last month when the new data detention data was first released. “These numbers show the scale of ICE enforcement, but they cannot capture the tears shed by families torn apart, or the pain community members share with us every day.”
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.