Holding signs reading, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” more than 100 Mainers gathered outside a downtown Portland building on Monday to protest the opening of a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. “We’re here to send a clear message that we don’t want ICE here,” said Hamdia Ahmed, a protest organizer.
“A spokesperson for the federal agency said the Homeland Security Investigations office specializes in transnational criminal investigations,” the Portland Press Herald reported, “and will not be focusing on detaining undocumented immigrants who face deportation.” But the unleashed agency’s escalating human rights abuses have made it the most unpopular federal agency among the public, according to recent polling, and outraged Mainers gathered outside the building this week to demand that the property’s owner, Dirigo Management, end the agency’s lease.
“I really feel like what’s going on at our border is absolutely abhorrent,” said demonstrator Anthony Emerson. “ICE is an immoral and amoral institution.” That’s absolutely correct, and a clear example is the fact that, in the past few weeks alone, the agency has been forced to move hundreds of women, many of them denied urgent medical care, from a notorious Texas detention center. “We’ve heard so many women talk to us about wanting to kill themselves,” one advocate said.
But even though the agency moved the women from the detention facility, advocates have been kept in the dark about their current whereabouts, and they fear that if their health concerns aren’t addressed—one woman was being denied cancer treatment and another cancer screening—there will be more deaths. Just days into ICE’s new fiscal year, it’s already had a death on its watch in another notorious facility in California. Nebane Abienwi, originally from Cameroon, was just 37.
In Maine, the Portland community has expressed outrage about anything associated with this agency being in their midst. “It very much concerns me,” said activist Sarah Gormady. “There are a good number of people who don’t want ICE in their town.” Among the leaders supporting the demonstrators was City Councilor Pious Ali. The Maine Beacon reported that, “Elected the same night as Trump,” Ali has been an advocate for newly arrived refugees in the area, and “called on the non-immigrant community to work in solidarity with migrants.” “This country was built on the backs of people of color,” he said.