Our job is to provide the public with accurate, fair and detailed information about the major things happening in Maine communities.
In the coming days, that could mean helping our readers understand the nature and impact of an anticipated surge in activity by federal immigration authorities in the Portland and Lewiston areas.
To do this well, we need your help.
Reporting on immigration enforcement is more difficult than covering other kinds of law enforcement. The agencies that primarily do this work in Maine — Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol — do not have to share real-time information about their activities or objectives. They often do not share or confirm basic facts, such as who they arrest and why.
Reporters also have fewer ways to verify that information independently. For example, when someone is charged with a state crime, we can obtain public documents at the courthouse that describe the charges against a defendant and what happens next in their case. If they’ve been booked at a jail, a phone call is usually all it takes to confirm where they are held and why.
Obtaining such basic information is not true with the immigration court system (think about it: immigration courts often deal with civil matters, such as green card or asylum cases, often involving personal details about people who aren’t usually there because they committed a crime). So reporters, like any other member of the public, often need more specific, sometimes personal, information to look up where someone has been detained or the status of their case.
If we hear that someone has been detained, we may rely on documentary evidence to corroborate that, like pictures or videos. We may need to ask that person’s family or friends for details that allow us to learn more information about them so we can track down certain facts. For instance, we usually need a detained person’s full name and nationality to look up where ICE is holding them.
We’ve set up a fast way to send us that information below, including a request for how to get in touch with you if we need to ask for more sensitive information that may be uncomfortable to provide over the internet.
If you have any question about what it means to provide information to a reporter, just ask. We realize that in asking for your help, we are asking for your trust.
We promise to handle sensitive information with care and in service of our job: to seek the truth and share it with the public.
