The mayor of Maine’s second-largest city said he believes federal immigration agents will soon arrive.
Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline issued a statement to media outlets saying it is his “understanding” that there will be U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the ground in the city soon. He urged residents and businesses to know their rights and have a plan if they’re contacted by agents.
“I understand that this is an unsettling time for many of our residents. Lewiston is a strong city and we care about our community and each other,” his statement said. “Please check on your neighbors and stay safe.”
Sheline’s statement did not offer further details as to how he got this information or when specifically ICE agents could arrive. His extraordinary move to raise the possibility of increased enforcement comes at a tense time for the Somali community on the heels of intense immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
Spokespeople for ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and the Lewiston Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
President Donald Trump’s administration announced Tuesday that it would end temporary protected status for Somali immigrants. Maine has a Somali community that has been growing in power and prominence in recent years. It is centered in Lewiston and Portland and took root in the early 2000s. Most of them were either born in the U.S. or have become citizens.
That move was the latest for the Trump administration in the wake of a federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, which followed nearly 100 federal prosecutions of people in welfare and Medicaid fraud schemes. Those cases largely 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.
Immigration authorities visited the city last month, posting pictures of Homeland Security Investigations agents visiting the Lewiston office of Gateway Community Services, an immigrant health care provider that Maine suspended payments to last month while alleging more than $1 million in interpreter fraud.
MaineCare providers based in Lewiston have been at the center of widespread allegations of fraud within the state’s version of Medicaid in recent weeks and months. Reporting in May from The Maine Wire, the media arm of the conservative Maine Policy Institute, led Republican lawmakers to call for more investigations and further scrutiny of the state’s payments via MaineCare for interpreting services.
Those calls have intensified in recent weeks following the state’s pause in payments to Gateway. Last week, Republicans on the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee filed a request to investigate alleged fraud against MaineCare vendors.
It also follows a series of reports from the Bangor Daily News. One examined a 2021 report outlining a suspicious billing pattern for interpreter services, especially among providers working with the state’s Somali community, that indicated widespread fraud within the MaineCare system. Another, focused on the quiet federal prosecution of three people tied to the Lewiston-based Bright Future Healthier You, for allegedly trying to defraud the federal government.
Bright Future Healthier You is a mental health organization that was the largest biller of MaineCare for interpreting services in the last 10 years.
BDN writer Callie Ferguson contributed to this report.
