Pedro, a carpenter, was at a job site when his wife called. Immigration agents had pulled her over, but they were looking for him.
The couple, who are asylum-seekers from Angola, had discussed what to do if one of them got arrested. The scenario they feared most was leaving their 10-year-old son without his parents. On that warm July morning, his wife had just dropped the boy off at summer school classes.
Over speakerphone, Pedro asked the officers if they would come to him and let his wife go, he said, and gave them his exact location.
“But they said they would only free her [when] they got me,” he said.
It took a few hours and some negotiating by a lawyer for Pedro to strike that deal. At approximately 4 p.m. on July 8, he walked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Scarborough office and traded places with his wife.
As ICE activity surged over the summer, the agents employed a range of methods to detain a record number of immigrants across the country. In Maine, the agency zeroed in on a small immigrant population that has largely followed the law.
ICE repeatedly pursued immigrants like Pedro, who came to the United States legally on a visa, applied for asylum and got a work permit. The Bangor Daily News identified about a dozen such cases in federal court records filed this summer in Maine and Massachusetts. They were arrested outside of their homes or their jobs or named as surveillance targets in arrest reports or warrants, according to immigration lawyers across New England.
Arrests like Pedro’s have stood out more in Maine than in other New England states, they said. They saw few explanations beyond a push to arrest as many people as possible in a state with few immigrants, many of whom have lived openly on the government’s radar. The pattern comes as the agency ramps up more discreetly following blowback over aggressive tactics. Just days after Pedro’s quiet arrest, a rookie agent’s killing of a man in Biddeford sparked fresh outrage.
“I don’t think in Massachusetts they are doing this camping outside someone’s home thing,” said Jacob Binnall, a Massachusetts-based lawyer who helped file a habeas corpus petition challenging Pedro’s detention. “In Maine, that does seem to be happening.”
The trend also undercuts the agency’s claim that it is targeting the “worst of the worst” criminals who came here illegally. An ICE spokesperson repeated that line to the BDN in a statement that did not answer pointed questions about its enforcement strategy.
“Our message is clear: if you come into our country illegally and break our laws, we will find you, we will arrest you, and we will deport you,” the spokesperson wrote.
Pedro, his wife and their son flew into John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on tourist visas in late 2021, then applied for asylum. His application describes his fear of being tortured over his Christian faith and political beliefs, according to a copy included in his habeas petition. He spoke through an interpreter on the condition that the BDN use only his first name because of his immigration status.
Asylum-seekers can wait years for a decision in the backlogged system, and the federal government lets them work in the meantime. One man arrested in July outside his job at a company that serves adults with disabilities had been waiting more than a decade, his petition said. A state report published last month found that foreign-born workers participate in the workforce at higher rates than Mainers as a whole.
The state’s unique immigrant composition — only about 4% of residents — prompted a study by the Washington D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute last year. It highlighted how an influx of new arrivals over the last decade, many asylum-seekers from Africa, have integrated into a more established population who tend to have citizenship or a green card.
“The number of immigrants is small, but we were struck by the impact particularly on the economy,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, one of the authors. “[My co-author] and I have both been surprised in ways that Maine has now become part of the larger target of ICE.”
When Pedro got to Maine, he took English classes and joined the carpenters union. His family attended church twice a week and his son enrolled in public school. He never expected to be arrested because he had his documents, paid his taxes and committed no crimes. He and his wife only began to grow frightened in recent months, when they realized that didn’t matter anymore.
When he hung up with his wife on the day she was stopped, his mind immediately went to his son. Though he had told agents to find him at the job site, he decided he needed to get the boy somewhere safe and he left, he said.
He then holed up at a friend’s house and found a lawyer, Shannon McKinnon. On the phone with an ICE supervisor, she helped work out the deal for Pedro’s surrender. By then, hours had passed, and Pedro learned that officers had already taken his wife to a field office in Burlington, Massachusetts.
“I said a lot of caring words about my wife, that I would give my life for her, that I was willing to swap and go in her place,” Pedro said. His account matches a federal court petition, including that the agent agreed to the deal so their son would have a parent to care for him. Binnall, his other former lawyer, said the bargaining in his case demonstrated ICE’s focus on numbers.
Visa entrants are entitled to a bond hearing before an immigration judge, so they are less likely than many other detainees to file federal petitions seeking one. When they do, their lawyers often have argued that ICE never explained why their clients needed to be detained, according to the BDN’s review.
One petitioner said he had lived openly for years at the address he gave the federal government when he applied for asylum, so he was not a flight risk. A Rwandan mother said her toddler was a U.S. citizen. Another man worked for a nonprofit that helps asylum-seekers settle in Maine.
None was accused of being a danger to public safety. Most immigrants who have been detained by ICE in Maine since Trump returned to office lack a criminal record, according to the Deportation Data Project. After a five-day operation in January and this summer’s surge, Maine saw the nation’s third-largest jump in arrests of people without convictions, according to a Maine Public analysis. Angolans have accounted for the greatest number of ICE detainees here, the data show.
Jamie Wagner, a Maine-based immigration lawyer, has represented more than a dozen asylum-seekers detained only for overstaying a visa. All were released once they went before an immigration judge, he said, and several said the agents who arrested them had told them they would be. ICE did not respond to a question about those statements.
“You spent $50,000 in bonuses to hire ICE agents to arrest people that they know they’ll be released in a couple weeks at their bond hearing?” Wagner said. “That seems insane from a taxpayer perspective, putting aside the inhumanity of it.”
Even hardline conservatives have struggled with the politics of arresting working immigrants. Former Gov. Paul LePage, the Republican candidate in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, has decried “illegal immigration” in campaign ads. Last month, he revealed that his son’s father-in-law had been deported.
“That’s not right. He has a work permit. He should be allowed to stay,” LePage said at an Augusta press conference.
He also told WMTW that “anybody who came in under the Biden years should be deported,” a group that includes many asylum-seekers with work permits who make up some of Maine’s newest immigrant communities. A LePage strategist did not respond to a question about his position.
When Pedro arrived at the Scarborough office, he saw his wife for the first time that day. He had left early for work that morning, and she had still been asleep. Pedro, usually reserved in his demeanor, held her and cried. Then he went to get fingerprinted.
The officer who oversaw this process seemed to notice his anxiety. “The ICE agent said, ‘Don’t worry. You will see a judge soon and everything will be resolved,’” Pedro said.
Months later, Pedro said he still lives in a constant state of worry. But the officer was right. Nine days after his arrest, he went before a judge and was freed.