-Photo by Nancy English
By Nancy English
In mid-June, a report in a neighborhood chat about an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) action in Maine turned into a report about an attempt to detain a man.
A car is left running. An ICE or other agency vehicle is identified, then seen leaving. Helpers trained as verifiers arrive to park and secure the car. A white man stands in a blue shirt under a leafy tree, his bullet-proof vest with the word “POLICE” not put to any test.
Follow up goes to the hotline (207-544-9989) at the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition (MIRC), to be tabulated in its reports.
According to one MIRC report at lighthouseme.org, less than 6 percent of the 200 detainees taken by ICE and other immigration enforcement personnel in the surge of arrests in January and February have criminal convictions.
What is the actual intent of these enforcement actions, the report asks, if it is not to increase public safety? It may have been to project power and incite fear, and to some extent that was accomplished. For a time, students stayed home from school and workers stayed away from work.
‘The community is only growing.’
But simultaneously the people in Maine communities organized. “Over 2,000 people have been trained as verifiers,” said Panagioti Tsolkas, MIRC’s communications manager, and trainings now include Fourth Amendment Workforce Trainings.
The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution protects everyone in this country from illegal searches. Businesses can require a judicial warrant to allow entry and deny entry to any enforcement agent without one.
“The community is only growing,” said Wes Pelletier, Portland’s District 2 City Councilor, who is involved with the neighborhood chats. “Standing outside to keep the community safe leads to real power… This is an awful situation. But what has come out of it is interconnection.”
The MIRC hotline connects affected people to helpers. The Immigrant Legal Aid Project (ILAP) offers legal help. Project Relief and the Solidarity Fund and many more help pay for it.
“During the enhanced ICE operation, ILAP triaged approximately 75 requests for emergency legal help for people arrested by ICE. Our program helped secured the release of at least 20 people. They are back home rebuilding their lives, but the impacts on them, their families, and our state will last,” said Lisa Parisio, ILAP Policy Director.
People affected have also seen that people nearby are ready to help.
Children who expressed fear about walking home from school got rides from other parents and were walked home from school or a bus stop. Attendance at one local elementary school was the same or better this February than in February of 2025, according to a Reiche Elementary School staff member, because of the work of the community.
Changing tactics
The Reiche Parent Teacher Organization created, overnight, neighborhood networks, raising funds for food, and setting up buddy families that shopped for neighbors and were reimbursed.
“Many families called Reiche School to express how thankful they were for the support they had received [like] safe transportation to and from school… They were grateful for groceries being delivered and regular check-ins with them. They were able to get rides to and from work or to doctor’s appointments, receive help with rent and utilities while they were not able to work, and get guidance if they received an eviction notice,” the staff person said. Many Portland neighborhoods stood up similar programs.
At the start of summer and following the “dragnet” chaos of “Operation Catch of the Day,” ICE tactics seem to have changed.
“Now actions are apparently more targeted,” Pelletier said.
“It appears that immigrant leaders are being targeted,” Tsolkas said. These are people with active roles in their churches or with a more public role by virtue of their work. By the very fact of their roles, however, they are finding broad support. Habeas Corpus petitions have been succeeding, allowing detainees a day in court to argue their case, which is often a request for asylum because of the threat of torture from their country of origin.
Advocacy work under threat
Nationwide, immigration cases in federal court this spring reached 10,000, from an average of less than 500 five years earlier. Most of these cases are “challenging actions of the federal government,” according to tracreports.org.
Other federal enforcement actions hint at additional threats. Tsolkas referenced an FBI “raid” on a nonprofit in Cleveland on June 11, 2026 at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, which promotes democratic rights like MIRC.
OOC board members were questioned in their homes, and some were subpoenaed, according to MSNOW.
Maine remains “one of the safest states in the nation,” as the MIRC report points out. But, Tsolkas said, “It is troubling when advocacy work is under threat.”
ICE agents have threatened people recording them including by saying they would be added to a domestic terrorist list. Pelletier said some New York City activists were not allowed on international flights. “But is everyone who doesn’t want [ICE] here a domestic terrorist? The list is too large.”
