President-elect Donald Trump ran in large part on promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and severely limit immigration into the country, including through legal pathways. Now, as the new administration takes shape, immigrant rights groups in Maine are girding for sweeping policy changes that could put many foreign-born residents at risk.
Some of the actions Trump has said he wants to take on his first day as President include ramping up a long-promised mass deportation. This week, Trump confirmed on social media he would declare a national emergency and seek to mobilize the military to carry out that plan.
Legal protections for Haitian, Afghan, Ukrainian, and other immigrants could also be on the chopping block.
Those actions would likely face legal challenges. But the threat is already rippling through some immigrant communities in Maine.
"My goodness, sheer panic. That's what I've been just hearing, is just panic," said Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Maine Immigrants Rights Coalition.
She said Maine's immigrant communities are not a monolith — and any policy change will likely affect individuals differently based on their immigration status, time in the country, and other factors.
Without knowing yet exactly which policies will be implemented, Chitam said her group is preparing for a rapid barrage of changes, similar to what they experienced during the first Trump administration.
"It was almost like policies were coming out nonstop, almost like a fire hose," Chitam recalled.
The starting place for organizations like hers, she said, is making sure immigrants in Maine understand their legal rights. Other groups are taking a similar approach.
"Despite threats of mass deportation, we do have a legal system and due process rights that must be enforced," said Sue Roche, executive director of the Portland-based Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project. She said a mass deportation effort would also face significant logistical hurdles, because she said the U.S. has never deported more than 500,000 people in a given year.
"The prospect of deporting 11 or 13 million people, just the logistics of that, and having an infrastructure set up to do that, is not really realistic at this time," Roche said.
Roche said other restrictions could be put in place more quickly. Those include changes in border enforcement, and a longstanding program known as Temporary Protected Status for people fleeing countries deemed too dangerous to return to. Some countries, including Honduras, have been eligible for TPS for decades.
"So you have a generation of people who have been here, living, working in our communities, who could potentially be at risk of losing status," Roche said.
Still, some groups say day-to-day challenges, including housing and healthcare, overshadow longer term political concerns for many immigrants in Maine.
"More so than anything, we just keep hearing the regular calls about housing crises, health needs, and resource navigation," said Crystal Cron who leads Presente Maine, which works closely with Latin American immigrant communities.
Cron said she hopes Trump's win will catalyze Maine Democrats — who are poised to maintain trifecta control in Augusta — to adopt state-level protections for immigrants.
