SCARBOROUGH, ME — Outside the federal immigration facility in Scarborough, the scene can look deceptively calm. People sit under a tent in lawn chairs, birds move through the trees, and volunteers wait with binoculars, clipboards and notebooks in hand.
That quiet can break in an instant. When unmarked SUVs rush into the lot, observers call out license plate numbers, note the makes and models, and track who goes in and who does not come back out. In Maine, a state with a relatively small immigrant population and limited organizing resources, that kind of watching has become a central response to ICE activity.
Volunteers and immigrant-rights groups say the work is exhausting, but they keep showing up because the stakes remain high and the detentions keep coming.
A small state built a rapid-response network around ICE sightings
Groups in Maine were not starting from zero. The Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition, which represents more than 100 state-based organizations, says it has about 100 trained regular volunteers. Presente! Maine, a Latino-led group, has also been helping fund bonds for detained immigrants through its solidarity fund.
Last October, the coalition and other groups launched a hotline to report ICE sightings. They also assembled a multilingual volunteer network using Signal so people could respond in Somali, Haitian Creole, Arabic and other languages spoken across Maine’s immigrant communities.
In May, the coalition and Presente! launched Lighthouse ME, an online immigrant-defense hub with arrest data and a visual sighting tracker. Organizers say these tools help neighbors document what is happening and connect families to help faster than word-of-mouth alone.
Operation Catch of the Day brought mass arrests and open fear
The pace of organizing accelerated in January, when the Trump administration launched Operation Catch of the Day. The crackdown targeted undocumented residents in Maine, a state where the fishing industry depends in part on migrant labor and where immigrants make up about 4% of residents.
During a nine-day stretch, ICE arrested 100 people, most of whom had no criminal records and were lawfully in the United States, according to the account from community organizers. Residents described masked agents smashing car windows, leaving vehicles on the roadside and, in one case, leaving a mother and baby inside an abandoned vehicle.
Community groups responded by trailing ICE vehicles, sharing warnings and dropping off groceries for neighbors too frightened to leave home. Mufalo Chitam of the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition said the speed of the operation overwhelmed the normal response system, because people were often picked up before anyone could alert others.
A July traffic stop in Biddeford changed the mood again
Any hope that federal agents had truly eased up faded in July, when an ICE agent killed 25-year-old father Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during a traffic stop in Biddeford, about 15 minutes from Scarborough. The killing came just days after another ICE agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston during a traffic stop.
For organizers, the death deepened fear that had already been building for months. Chitam said the week Durán was killed brought 128 calls to the ICE-watching hotline. People took to the streets in Biddeford, and elected officials called for an investigation.
Crystal Cron of Presente! Maine said Durán’s death was devastating but not surprising to many immigrant families. She said people in those communities have long lived with the threat of persecution and that being chased in public is not new.
Observers say ICE has grown less visible but not less aggressive
ICE has shifted toward less public-facing tactics, but organizers say the agency’s reach has not shrunk. In Maine, agents have followed observers home, fired pepper balls at cars and told some residents they would be added to a “domestic terrorist” list, according to advocates.
The Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union responded by launching a hotline for reports of First Amendment violations. People who say they were targeted during the crackdown have also filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.
Zach Heiden, chief counsel for the ACLU of Maine, said the constitution protects the right to observe and record law enforcement in public. He said the government keeps finding ways to interfere with those rights, and the group is prepared to keep litigating if needed.
Marches, hearings and daily support show a wider immigrant defense effort
Maine’s response has spread beyond watching ICE parking lots. After Durán’s killing, the state’s “ICE Out” laws took effect 13 days later, restricting cooperation between ICE and local police, landlords, schools and state health care facilities. Heiden said those laws would not have saved Durán, but they did mark a political shift at the state level.
Residents also plan to march 70 miles from Senator Susan Collins’s office in Biddeford to Augusta to protest her support for ICE funding. In August, an unofficial congressional “shadow hearing” organized by Representative Chellie Pingree packed a Biddeford high school auditorium with grieving and angry residents.
At the same time, volunteers at Scarborough continue helping families outside the facility, including the wife of asylum seeker Jonas Manywa, who was arrested in front of his two daughters during a routine appointment in August. Manywa’s family got help getting home, a reminder that in Maine, the watch line has also become a support line.
Local news that matters, from Dulaney Griffin.
