As fuel and grocery prices soar and the chatter of impending shortages across the country grow louder, most Americans find themselves in what increasingly feels like a downward economic and mental spiral. A spiral that has been facilitated by the Trump administration’s inane policies. A spiral that almost certainly will only intensify as more of the Big Ugly Bill goes into effect after the November midterms and people realize that the social safety net has truly become a few tattered strings—that the administration’s mindset now turned into policies which are absolutely designed to inflict maximum harm upon the majority of the population.
Yet this administration has been inflicting cruelty upon America for almost two years straight. While we have borne witness to what is happening to our immigrant communities and many of us have stood in solidarity at protests and assisted immigrant communities, have any of us truly considered the psychic toll of being hunted by a country that once welcomed you with open arms? Or, at the very least, a country that looked the other way so that it could profit off the labor of the undocumented and documented immigrants alike.
Several days ago, a local organizer texted me to tell me of a situation in Lewiston, Maine. A community member who is an immigrant was set up by a property manager. The community member’s brother had recently been released from ICE custody and, no surprise, in the aftermath of being detained by ICE was struggling with severe depression. Something happened and he ended up in ICU fighting for his life. His brother contacted the property management company that his brother allegedly has been renting from and spoke with a woman (who has been referenced as Doris on social media) to ask if he could come to his brother’s apartment to get his belongings. Doris says “no problem,” and asks when she could expect him.
Well, the brother of the depressed man who is currently in ICU after recently being released from ICE detention, himself ends up detained by ICE when he goes to his brother’s place. Apparently, Doris the property manager decided to call ICE on the brother coming to retrieve his brother’s belongings and when questioned in the aftermath of the man’s detention her response (and I received access to a recording between her and a local organizer, so I’ve heard the words first-hand) was that she called the cops because the man wasn’t here legally.
Note that the Lewiston police department doesn’t work with ICE and Maine has a new state law, L.D. 2176, which prohibits landlords and their agents from disclosing certain personal information about tenants, prospective tenants or occupants when the disclosure is intended to harass, intimidate or cause someone to leave a property outside the judicial process and without a legitimate business purpose.
According to local social media and Amajambo Africa, a local publication, others connected to the property have been detained by ICE in recent months, raising the question of whether the property management company is providing information to federal agents that is leading to immigrants being targeted—among them, as noted already, a family going through the horrific experience of having one member fighting for his life in ICU and another being detained by ICE.
Increasingly here in Maine, as the ICE abductions have picked up speed, there are also the stories of immigrants being released and how these detentions upend their lives and create a permanent state of fear and unease.
Several weeks ago, the Portland Press Herald published a story about Jonas Manywa, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has been detained by ICE several times due to being previously arrested for a DUI in 2024. Manywa claims he was not aware of the legal alcohol limit and hasn’t drank alcohol since the arrest and initial detention. The 2024 arrest led to a status of withholding of removal, a designation often given to immigrants seeking asylum who have a nonviolent criminal record. Under previous administrations, people with withholding of removal status were allowed to stay in the United States indefinitely because they couldn’t be deported to their home country. But the Trump administration changed the policy to consider deporting people under that status to a third country whose government is willing to take them.
Manywa, by all published accounts, is a decent guy and his only crime is being an immigrant since far too many Americans have caught a DUI case and aren’t banished forever. Manywa’s most recent detention was in August and he is now currently back home with his wife and kids, where every Friday he has to check in and he knows that at any point he might be snatched up and possibly sent to a country he has no connection to.
And just now, I have been made aware of a call to action from Project Relief on behalf of a Portland teen who needs legal representation to avoid being deported to unsafe conditions (read more about that here) and urgently needs more than $5,000 before Wednesday for legal representation. Yet another in a continuing line of heartbreaking stories authored by a cruel regime.
As uncomfortable as many of our lives have become under this administration, how much more uncomfortable is it for those being targeted or at high risk of being targeted?
In hearing about the young man who was detained in Maine and suffering from depression in the aftermath and pondering the 17-year-old who now needs urgent legal funding, I found myself thinking about Pierre Damas Bel, the young man with the promising future in Ohio who—after having his temporary protected status taken away and being forced to wear an ankle monitor which led to bullying and teasing and impacted his ability to play soccer—took his own life.
When we think of our own never-ending frustration and anxiety about this administration, how many of us are still privileged to know that we probably won’t be dragged from our cars and homes by semi-literate goons? Or that if we are, our citizenship means that we will be only briefly detained while they verify our right to exist in their reality and then be released—unlike the millions now living in abject fear and anxiety of the unknown.
Until recently, I have walked around daily with my own fears in the aftermath of Trump’s targeting of immigrants and watching it play out here in Maine, a very homogeneously white state where not being white makes you a target. As I shared last year across all platforms, I was dealing with the need to get a Real ID. The problem was that my birth certificate needed to be amended because my first name was never put on my birth certificate and, well, amending a birth certificate 52 years after your birth while no longer living in your birth state is not an easy process. It took time and money that thankfully I had and eventually I did get it amended and was able to get my Real ID. Also, as of a few days ago, at the tender age of 53, I now have my very first U.S. passport and passport card. So, if I am stopped by ICE, I can easily prove that I am in fact a U.S. Citizen assuming they allow me to show them the ID before they drag me away or assault me. For months now in the aftermath of the initial ICE surge in Maine, I have been carrying my birth certificate should I ever need to prove my right to exist in this country, since Real ID wasn’t truly proof of citizenship, much less birth here. As ludicrous as this may sound to some readers, I am hardly the first BIPOC person to “carry their papers” even if they are born and raised here. There are many of us, especially in a state like Maine, because people are demanding those papers now for non-white folks.
It is 2026, and there are American citizens carrying their papers. Let that sink in. What other notable country and regime made certain people carry their papers? Yeah, Nazi Germany.
The cruelty that is happening as we strive to survive is taking a toll on all of us. While we work to push back though, we have to also consider the human toll, because again, our frustration, fears and anxiety are not equal. In considering the human toll, we also have to realize that part of our resistance efforts must include community care to create moments where we can meet each other in the fragility of our existence and see one another.
See one another both as allies in a common struggle and also as people receiving very different levels of treatment by the regime. The overall injustice is real, but so too is the extreme inequity of the oppression.
Would Pierre Damas Bel still be here if he had been met with compassion for his ankle monitor instead of ridicule? How many others are spiraling deeper into hopelessness because of this administration? How can we support each other and affirm our respective humanity?
There are those who believe our current situation and system is beyond hope and needs to be scrapped and that a new vision needs to take hold. If that is what happens, though—having to rise from the ashes of a ruined country—are we prepared to collectively support one another in all forms?
Right now, I worry that our collective anxiety and fear clouds our ability to see any relative privilege that we may hold even in a world of overall dwindling privilege and will keep too many people from realizing that we all have a role to play even when we don’t feel that we have much to offer.
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Image by Shubham Sharan, obtained via Unsplash
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