‘Operation Catch of the Day’ in Maine May Have Ended, but Fear and Trauma Remain: Advocates

ICE, meanwhile, defends tactics, care of detainees

“I am American, born and raised,” says Ruben Torres, an immigration advocate living in Maine. “A proud, card-carrying American.”

But since the Department of Homeland Security announced its ostensibly short-lived “Operation Catch of the Day” in Torres’ state, he’s taken precautions he’d never before considered.

The U.S.-born, Mexican American recently had his passport renewed so he can carry it with him in case he’s stopped by federal agents.

“I’m worried,” he tells the Sampan. He’s familiar, after all, with the reports of people like him getting swept up in raids and detained, and then forced to prove their own citizenship or other legal status.

The story of Torres, an advocacy and policy manager for the nonprofit Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition, speaks to the lasting consequences of the apparently short-lived raids in Maine. The operation supposedly ended weeks after it began in January. But reports of arrests still continue in even the remotest corners of the state. Now, months later, Torres and others interviewed for this story say the crackdowns have psychologically wounded not only immigrant communities there, but also the state’s small population of ethnic and racial minorities. For those ensnared in the raids, a number of whom have reportedly been since let out on bond and had never been convicted of crimes, the effects have been more severe: fear, anxiety, and, for some, painful financial losses, say advocates.

Operation Catch of the Day was announced with much fanfare by the Department of Homeland Security shortly after the new year started. The launch included a Fox News crew “embedded” with some of the agents who traveled the streets of Portland and beyond, declaring they were targeting 1,400 immigrants, what DHS called, “the worst of the worst.” This was as the nation was already gripped by the images and videos coming out of Minnesota. There, Operation Metro Surge was underway. Thousands of federal agents had flooded that state. Stories of legal immigrants and even citizens getting locked up and warrantless entries were making the headlines — and soon so would be the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good. To date, those two are among a handful of citizens killed or injured by federal immigration authorities.

The operation in Maine also came after nearly a year of headlines about heavy handed tactics around the nation, accusations of racial profiling, and reports of people getting arrested while going to normally scheduled immigration check-ins.

For its part the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have defended their detention centers, crackdowns and policies, telling Sampan in an email that "ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens," and rejected any notion it racially profiles targets or denies any detainees necessary accommodations or care.

The ‘Whitest’ State Targeted

When the Department of Homeland Security announced Operation Catch of the Day in January, the agency’s portrayal of Maine as a place where “criminal illegal aliens” were terrorizing communities just didn’t seem to jibe with what public officials, advocates and attorneys were seeing on the ground.

Portland’s mayor, Mark Dion, said at the outset of the raids that no evidence existed of “unchecked criminal activity in our community” that would warrant a disproportionate federal response.

The idea that 1,400 “worst of the worst” immigrant criminals were roaming the streets also didn’t appear to line up with the statistics.

First, the known immigrant population in the state is relatively tiny, according to Census figures. Only about 4.1% of Maine’s total population is foreign born, a slight uptick from around 3.6% a decade ago. Over 93% of the state’s population is white. Maine in fact, is the whitest state in the nation, according to a Maine Policy Review report in 2020.

“The joke in college was ‘I look like a fly in the milk’,” says Torres of Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition, or MIRC.

Crime is also relatively low overall in Maine. In fact, the state has the lowest violent crime rate of all the 50 states, according to 2025 data. U.S. News and World Report ranks it No. 1 for its low crime rate.

It is true that some of the immigrants arrested by ICE in Maine did have violent criminal histories, such as a man from Sudan who had convictions that included aggravated assault, and some others who were felons. But many others, according to interviews and reports in the Associated Press and the Portland Press Herald, had no criminal histories at all. Some lacked proper paperwork and others were in the process of filing applications for legal status say advocates.

“The number just really didn’t make a lot of sense,” says Torres. “If you have a list of 1,400 people, then you have to have probable cause or evidence to arrest these people. So, show us the warrants.”

Shaan Chatterjee of the Massachusetts-based firm New England Immigration Law represented four Mainers caught up in Operation Catch of the Day and says not one of his four clients – including a deaf man — had any prior criminal history. All four, he says, ended up getting released after around a couple weeks in detention.

Marpheen Chann, courtesy photo

Why Maine?

Chatterjee, who has over the years worked with many clients from Maine, says he was not surprised the state was targeted.

“I was well aware that the immigrant community there is not as small as people think,” says Chatterjee, who had clerked in the Superior Court of Bangor. A sizeable Ecuadorian population of undocumented immigrants – “who are very vital to the local economy” – live in the state, he says.

“That was one reason why I wasn’t surprised. The other reason was that Operation Catch of the Day seemed to come in the wake of conspiracy theories around Somali immigrants. In Maine, there is a large Somali refugee population in particular. So, once the Trump administration started making these talking points and really denigrating the Somali immigrant community, I knew it was only a matter of time before they were going to come to Maine.”

Marpheen Chann, the executive director and founder of the advocacy group Khmer Maine, says he agrees the administration likely had its sights on the Somali community, members of which the president had reportedly called "garbage."

But he believes there’s another, more basic reason. “Retribution,” speculates Chann, who is running for Cumberland County Commission. He views the operation as a way of getting back at Maine politicians who opposed the president’s policies as well as immigrant populations the administration has spoken ill of in the past. Chann also sees the operation as part of a larger effort to scapegoat immigrants and minorities, to make non-immigrants feel better about themselves and their lot in life as the jobs picture dims and prices on many goods stay increasingly less affordable.

"The allegation that we target individuals or groups based on nationality is irresponsible, dangerous, and simply absurd." - ICE spokesperson

The spokesperson for ICE’s New England office, however, objected to the idea that ICE would target people based on their country of origin or other reasons besides criminal histories, illegal entry or a lack of documentation. "The allegation that we target individuals or groups based on nationality is irresponsible, dangerous, and simply absurd," wrote the spokesperson, adding that "those who entered our country illegally are guilty of a crime. The fact of the matter is those who are in our country illegally have a choice — they can leave the country voluntarily or be arrested and deported. The United States taxpayer is generously offering free flights and $2,600 to illegal aliens who self-deport using the CBP Home App. If they leave now, they preserve the potential opportunity to come back the legal, right way. The choice is theirs."

Screen shot of "Operation Catch of the Day" press release.

Out on Bond, Forever Traumatized

Those interviewed for this story say that even those who get out of detention after a couple weeks still face great psychological and financial costs.

“Immigration is a very expensive process. It’s not something that you can just do for free,” Torres notes.

Many refugees and other immigrants might have spent their life savings just to start over in Maine. And then they have to pay recently increased application fees and legal fees. If they get detained and let go, they could be faced with the cost of getting a lawyer, paying bond and missing work.

“Some people have lost their jobs,” says Torres, “because they missed work.”

And the detention itself is traumatizing, says Chatterjee, whose four clients had been transported to Massachusetts from Maine. “My understanding from my clients’ descriptions is the holding cells are crowded. There is one toilet. There are no windows. The food is inadequate.”

Detention for his deaf client was especially problematic, he says, noting that the man “was totally unable to communicate with anybody because he was not provided with a sign language interpreter.”

The ICE spokesperson, however, says that disability services are in fact provided, writing that ICE provides "necessary accommodations for disabilities including interpretative services for aliens who may be deaf or hard of hearing."

“All detainees are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, and toiletries, and have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers. Certified dieticians evaluate meals. All of this is funded the by the US taxpayer,” according to the spokesperson.

Chatterjee says his deaf client, however, was released on his own recognizance, after Chatterjee filed a habeas corpus petition on the man's behalf.

"The circumstances varied for all four, but for my deaf client, he was actually raided at his house, which is alarming — alarming given you know, they certainly didn’t have a Fourth Amendment warrant," says Chatterjee.

"The circumstances varied for all four, but for my deaf client, he was actually raided at his house, which is alarming — alarming given you know, they certainly didn’t have a Fourth Amendment warrant." -- Attorney Shaan Chatterjee.

Another client, he says, was pulled over while driving.

Two of his clients, including the man who is deaf, are seeking asylum and another was under age 21 and was pursuing a Special Immigrant Juvenile visa. The fourth client was apparently without any required documentation, but has a U.S. citizen stepson, says Chatterjee. In addition to the deaf client who was let out after about a week, the other three clients were able to be released on bond after the attorney filed habeas corpus petitions on their behalf.

Such petitions typically require authorities to justify continued detention of a person.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.

“For all of my clients detained by ICE, it’s a traumatic experience that they will never forget. The first thing my clients ask me after they get out is, ‘Can ICE re-arrest me?’ And the answer, legally, is, only if there is a material change in circumstances. But I think we’ve seen recently that ICE is more than willing to not comply with the law and will detain anyone that they want. … So there is the psychological toll of being detained … and there is the toll of the anxiety of being redetained.”

Raids Continue

Operation Catch of the Day supposedly wound down after an announcement from U.S. Sen. Susan Collins on Jan. 29. But the numbers show that arrests are still up from before the operations began. They also show that DHS is still far from its original goals.

During the month of the operation, January 2026, ICE made 210 immigration arrests, more than four times the arrests made the month before in December 2025, when there were 45 immigration arrests in Maine, according to a spokesperson.

The following month, in February, however, arrests remained elevated from December with 65 in total in Maine, according to the spokesperson.

“It’s not as in your face as when we would have five ICE agents walking around in the Old Port, but it’s still in your face in that people aren’t showing up for work … or a kid doesn’t show up after school because their parents got detained on their way to pick them up from school,” says Torres of MIRC.

Data MIRC obtained from an information request also shows that in the first year of the new administration, immigration arrests in Maine were already higher than from the previous year.

ICE apprehensions in Maine between Jan. 1 and Oct. 15, 2025 — a partial year’s data — were up by 37% when compared to all of 2024, found MIRC.

ICE's New England office declined to say whether Operation Catch of the Day was officially over or what other plans were in place for the state.

"For operational security purposes, ICE does not disclose any ongoing, upcoming, or potential law enforcement operations,” according to the spokesperson.

What is apparent, however is an upward trend in immigration arrests in Maine and new reports of arrests. Just as the Sampan spoke with Chann last week, he mentioned a recent raid on farmworkers in Skowhegan, a tiny town of fewer than 9,000 residents. Around a dozen workers – including a single mother from Venezuela who is seeking asylum – were nabbed in the “second such operation in less than a month,” according a report by Maine Public Radio.

Torres spoke of steel workers who were targeted.

“The interesting thing about it is we’ve been getting more and more calls away from the metro areas of Maine, but more in the north and central areas of the state,” says Torres.

Many of these newer arrests are continuing to upend people’s lives and spread fear among the greater immigrant population, say advocates.

Stories in the Portland Press Herald, Associated Press and other news outlets offer a window into the tactics reportedly used by agents during Operation Catch of the Day. In Biddeford, a man from Ecuador who said he was legally in the U.S., according to Associated Press reporting, was visited by authorities who had no warrant.

“In a video shared widely on social media and verified by the AP, a man in police gear told the resident that ‘We’re going to come back for your whole family’,” according to a Press Herald report.

According to another report in the newspaper, workers at a Japanese restaurant were detained, though a manager said the workers had their employment paperwork in order. In that raid, “agents requested proof of citizenship from everyone present and did not offer a specific explanation for the arrests,” a manager told the Portland Press Herald. Sampan’s efforts to get a comment from the restaurant’s manager were unsuccessful.

These types of reports have some members of the local Cambodian population and other Southeast Asians, especially older ones, fearful to leave their homes, says Chann.

A striking example of the fear caused by the shock of the original operation was the drop in school attendance, say some observers.

“About a thousand kids every day on average during that operation weren’t going to school,” said James Myall, a policy analyst with the Maine Center for Economic Policy. He added that the immigration raids caused much fear in Maine’s overall minority population – in part because most of the non-white population is itself the same as the foreign-born population.

This rang true for Torres. For many people of color, he said, “the target on your back just got bigger ... in a state where you already stand out.”

Chatterjee notes that the psychological toll of these ICE detentions ripples through entire communities. “A lot of my clients have U.S. citizen children, U.S. citizen spouses, brothers, sisters, parents. And certainly when their loved ones are detained by ICE it’s a huge psychological toll…. For the children, I can only imagine how scary this is."

Losing Trust in the System

Those interviewed for this story say in addition to the news reports of masked agents, broken car windows and alleged warrantless entries into homes, the entire immigration system is now looked at with less trust. Just this week, it was reported that 11 immigrants have to date died in immigration custody since the start of the year, according to data by Austin Kocher of New York’s Syracuse University. That number includes one man who died of what was reported by Ktar.com to be an untreated tooth infection.

But some say even cracks in common procedures are emerging. Chann told a story that he says happened to several people he knows in the Cambodian community in Maine. They make the trip to Gannett Drive in South Portland for appointments at the local United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office only to find the building closed, with yellow caution tape across the doors.

One of these immigrants called Chann to ask for help as he stood outside the building. He texted him a photo of the spot, unsure whether he’d mistaken the address.

“He said, ‘Is this where it is? I feel like this is a trap,” says Chann, who provided Sampan the photo and other documentation.

For Chann and other observers, such incidents add to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the immigration system. Though a U.S. citizen by birth, Chann is familiar with the system through his advocacy work and relationship with the region’s Cambodian community.

A State in Need of New Residents

Observers say the federal targeting of Maine comes at a bad time for the state that is seeing its native-born population quickly aging.

“Maine faces a shortage of workers across regions, professions, and skill levels, especially in critical sectors such as health care, education, and construction,” according to The Maine Office of New Americans.

As Maine’s population grows older, says Myall, the demand for new workers — especially and including immigrant workers – is growing. Residents will need more health care and home care services, he says, and immigrants are traditionally a large source of that labor pool.

“Healthcare industries and home health care industries are increasingly reliant on immigrant workers,” says Myall, noting that the unfortunate reality is that workers in those jobs are typically underpaid.

Maine also traditionally relies on foreign workers for its farming industry and on temporary visa workers for tourism and hospitality industries, which has seasonal demand, Myall says.

The roofing industry too relies on immigrant workers, notes Chatterjee.

These types of industries critical to Maine’s economy and way of life could be affected if people from other countries decide the risk of coming to the U.S. and Maine in particular – after the headline-making Catch of the Day operation – proves higher than the financial reward.

“I think in general that atmosphere of fear,” says Myall, “is very real.”