The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday that immigration agents had launched “Operation Catch of the Day” in Maine, the latest state to be targeted as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation push.
Even as Immigration and Customs Enforcement starts to surge officers there, federal officials are hoping to avoid a repeat of the widespread resistance that ICE’s heavy presence has triggered in Minneapolis, according to several officials familiar with the preparations.
The top prosecutor in Maine had issued a statement Monday hinting at the surge and telling residents that “in the coming days, if Maine citizens seek to exercise their rights to assemble and protest, it is vital that these protests remain peaceful.”
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the operation’s first day netted multiple arrests of individuals convicted of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and endangering the welfare of a child.
The mayors of Portland and Lewiston, Maine’s two biggest cities, had warned their residents that ICE might be about to ramp up its enforcement operations in the coming days. Both cities, located about 30 miles apart, are home to sizable communities of Somali immigrants, as well as asylum seekers from several other African countries.
In Portland, volunteers were delivering groceries to families too afraid to venture outside and some local schools reported students staying home, Mayor Mark Dion said Tuesday. “Everyone is on high alert,” he added.
Two local schools briefly stopped people from entering or leaving on Tuesday morning after learning of potential ICE activity nearby. “This is an understandably tense time in our community, as reports and rumors of immigration enforcement actions grow,” Portland Public Schools said in a statement.
The three federal officials who confirmed the surge planning provided information on the condition of anonymity because no new operation had yet been publicly announced.
While Portland and Lewiston are major cities by Maine standards, they would represent the smallest metropolitan area to become a special target of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The population of greater Portland, which includes Lewiston, is about 570,000 people.
The operation underway in Minneapolis and St. Paul — dubbed Operation Metro Surge — is the largest to date, with thousands of federal officers flooding the streets of the Twin Cities. Residents have repeatedly confronted ICE agents, and on Jan. 7, an officer shot and killed Renée Good, a U.S. citizen, during an encounter on a street near her home. Seven days later, another officer shot a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg.
As of Tuesday, the operation has logged 3,000 arrests in six weeks, according to Customs and Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino.
The Trump administration has cited a sprawling fraud investigation into safety-net programs — involving organizations linked to the Somali community — as justification for its actions in Minneapolis. The dozens of Somali individuals implicated in that scandal amount to a tiny fraction of the approximately 80,000 people of Somali descent who live in Minnesota, the vast majority of whom are U.S. citizens. But the president has repeatedly denigrated all Somali immigrants in xenophobic terms, likening them to “garbage” and saying, “We don’t want them in our country.”
During a speech last week at the Detroit Economic Club, he again discussed what he called “Somali scams” in Minnesota and then pivoted. “Well, you know, it’s going on in Maine too, with Somalis,” he said. “In Maine, it’s really crooked as hell, too.”
It was not clear what Trump was referencing. Recently, authorities in Maine temporarily suspended payments to a social services organization that works with immigrants and refugees because of allegations of fraud.
The two House Democrats representing Maine in Congress, Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, have been monitoring ICE’s activity across their districts since last week. Pingree and her staff have sent repeated messages to the White House asking about the potential ramp up and justification for ICE agents in the state but have yet to receive any response from the administration.
A surge could reverberate in Maine’s Senate race, which is critical to Democrats’ long shot strategy to retake the chamber. Sen. Susan Collins is the most vulnerable Republican senator running for reelection this year. Two Democrats — Gov. Janet Mills and Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran — are vying to take her on.
Mills has highlighted her clash with Trump last year over his threat to block federal funding for Maine over its policies toward transgender athletes. In a video message last week, she said that she had not confirmed whether expanded ICE operations were in the works.
“To the federal government, I say this: If your plan is to come here to be provocative and to undermine the civil rights of Maine residents, do not be confused — those tactics are not welcome here,” she said.
“Maine knows what good law enforcement looks like,” Mills continued. “They don’t wear a mask to shield their identities, and they don’t arrest people to fill quotas.”
Somali immigrants began arriving in Maine more than 20 years ago. Many have become U.S. citizens, and some have been elected to city councils and school boards in both Lewiston and Portland. Three Somali Americans serve in the Maine House of Representatives.
In recent years, Portland also saw an influx of migrants and asylum seekers from Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere. Each city has been home to robust refugee resettlement programs, welcoming people fleeing war-torn Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Under the Trump administration, nearly all refugee admissions were suspended. Its only exception was for members of the Afrikaner community, White South Africans who Trump has claimed without evidence are the victims of genocide. A handful of Afrikaners have already arrived in Maine, with a total of 50 expected to settle there over the coming year, refugee advocates say.
David Nakamura, Marianna Sotomayor and Caroline O’Donovan contributed to this report.
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