President Donald Trump’s administration announced Tuesday it would end temporary protected status for Somali immigrants, a move that looks to have a limited immediate effect in Maine.
It came during the federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where federal prosecutors charged dozens of people in a Medicaid fraud scheme that centered on the large Somali community there. An immigration agent shot and killed a woman in her car there last week, leading to national protests against the Republican president’s policies.
Maine has a notable Somali community in Lewiston and Portland that took root in the early 2000s. Many of them were born in the U.S. or have become citizens, muting the initial impact of Trump’s move. His administration has begun reviewing the cases of Somali refugees in Minnesota, which could have a bigger effect if it is eventually extended to Maine.
Whether it will be is unclear. Last month, immigration agents visited the Lewiston office of Gateway Community Services, an immigrant health care provider that Maine suspended payments to last month, alleging more than $1 million in interpreter fraud.
Trump is ending a temporary immigration status that was applied to Somalia in 1991 at the outbreak of a civil war that is still going on. Roughly 2,500 people are expected to be affected across the country, but a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson did not answer a question about how many people in Maine it would affect.
Maine’s Somali community was estimated at 10,000 people roughly a decade ago. There were roughly 3,200 people who identified as Somali here in 2021, according to census data. Nearly 65% were U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization. Roughly 1,000 were not citizens, but many of them could have other forms of legal status.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also not targeted Somalis in Maine compared to other members of the African diaspora here. As of October, it had only detained one Somali immigrant in Maine since Trump took office in 2025. Agents arrested a man with a criminal record in September, according to detention data obtained by the Deportation Data Project.
By comparison, immigrants from Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for the first and third greatest number of the agency’s arrests between January and October of 2025, according to the data. Many of them came to the country via the southern border and fed waves of asylum seekers to southern Maine in recent years.
Last week, the Trump administration announced a review of refugee cases in Minnesota , saying it was aimed at 5,600 immigrants who had not yet been given green cards and had already produced some criminal referrals. The temporary protected status for Somalia will end on March 17 unless legal action is taken.
“We are putting Americans first,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.
The move was condemned by the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, a legal aid group based in Portland that said conditions have not improved enough in Somalia to end the status.
“The termination of TPS for Somalia is not justified under the law and is clearly part of the administration’s overall targeting of Somali communities in Minnesota and beyond,” Lisa Parisio, the group’s policy director, said in a statement.
