LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The midterm elections are one month away. And every week until then, my cohosts and I will take you to people and places in battleground states that will determine the balance of power in this country. Today, we're in Maine, where immigration enforcement here is playing out in ways that echo other places in the country.
AMY SMITH: They're still disappearing a person a day.
FADEL: A person a day?
SMITH: Yeah. Yeah.
FADEL: At least that's how it feels to Amy Smith, the founder of Healthy Homeworks describing the ICE presence in her neighborhood of Lewiston, north of Portland, with a large immigrant community. We meet her at her office, where she pulls out a map.
SMITH: This is our map for the work that we do.
FADEL: OK.
SMITH: Which is basically, we do...
FADEL: She describes her work making home ownership attainable for residents here.
SMITH: It's the intersection of the three poorest census tracts in the state. Heavy concentration of immigrants, highest concentration of children under 5, very high lead poisoning levels.
FADEL: Smith has lived in this former mill town for years. Today, she says, the fear running through her city has never been so palpable. And that's most visible at a nearby daycare. These days, the daycare's curtains are always drawn.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FADEL: Inside, babies and toddlers are taking naps, giving us a chance to talk to staff.
H: Nice to meet you.
FADEL: I'm Leila.
H: Nice to meet you, Leila.
FADEL: 19-year-old H helps run this daycare with her mom. They're asylum seekers from Angola. They ask us to use only their first initials because of how afraid they are of drawing ICE's attention. H says she's anxious every second she's outside the house.
H: You walk fast. You don't walk alone. And if there's a car following or you think it's following, that's when you start to panic.
FADEL: Because it seems quiet outside.
H: It looks quiet because when it started, they started taking people out loud. It was a big mess. So they're pretending like they stopped. If you're isolated, that's where they're going to take you.
FADEL: Before the ICE surge started in January, the daycare had 32 kids. The parents are mostly immigrants. They got scared. They stopped coming. The daycare also shut down for a few weeks. But then many immigrants had to reemerge.
H: Because we have to work. We have bills. So now we go out, but you have to be alert.
FADEL: Today, only 12 of the kids are back in their care. H and her mom say their family has done everything right, sought asylum, followed the rules. But one of H's siblings was detained by ICE.
How many people do you both know that have been detained?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
H: Too many. Too many to count.
FADEL: By July, there was a 161% jump of arrests by ICE of people with no criminal records in Maine. That's compared to all of last year. Maine Public analyzed federal data the Deportation Data Project obtained. I ask H and her mom if they feel support from their neighbors. They say yes, from some who've brought them food, taken out their trash, helped with rent. But not everyone supports them. And I heard that in Lewiston and beyond, a woman screaming as she passes the front door of this daycare.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: And there's this daycare. And the people that run this daycare, I'm going to kill them.
FADEL: Another yelling out the window at an anti-ICE protest encampment in another city.
I see a sign that says...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Ice, ice, baby.
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FADEL: OK, you just heard somebody yelling out their window, ice, ice, baby, at these protesters.
Lewiston business owner Matthew Terry (ph), who says ICE has made things better.
MATTHEW TERRY: ICE made it known that they were coming to Lewiston and the shootings stopped. Nothing, not a peep, nothing.
FADEL: We head back toward Amy Smith's office, the Lewiston resident who's been helping her neighbors afford homes.
SMITH: It just makes me so sad because the people who are here are working so hard to build a good life. And three years ago, they were thriving, and now they're not. These are not the worst of the worst. I don't know of anybody in Lewiston who's been apprehended who is actually a criminal.
FADEL: The way ICE acts with what she sees as casual cruelty and the way that attitude is encouraged between neighbors, that's shaping Amy Smith's vote this year. She says she voted for the Senate Republican incumbent Susan Collins once some 20 years ago.
SMITH: But since then, have not been a supporter. I think, for me, the biggest thing is to make sure that our federal government actually works for us and that the money stops flowing to these ridiculous vanity projects. And there's no reason that we are at war right now. And so, the shortsightedness and the rhetoric and the activities and the cuts, it's just disgusting.
FADEL: But she's not only angry at the Republican Party and the president.
SMITH: But I completely blame the Democratic Party for Trump being in office again. The minute Biden got elected the first time, they had to figure out who was next. And they just didn't. They just didn't do it.
FADEL: So, she says, she's watching her neighbors struggle. And she spends every day trying to protect them.
SMITH: So it's really exhausting to be actually doing the hard work - right? - for your neighbors and watching people of privilege take potshots all day every day without any actual facts.
FADEL: Smith doesn't want what happened this summer in another city in Maine, Biddeford, to happen ever again, when ICE shot and killed a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant and father named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during an attempted traffic stop on his way to work. The Department of Homeland Security told NPR that they never said he was the target of ICE agents that day. He leaves behind a 3-year-old daughter, Dulce, and his wife, Karolina Rojas Alvarez. I spoke with her recently at her lawyer's office.
What has life been like since that day?
KAROLINA ROJAS ALVAREZ: (Through interpreter) Very difficult. Now I have to face everything alone. And it's even more painful to hear my little girl scream his name, saying, papa, where are you? That's the most painful thing I've had to experience ever since his death, and that I can't bring him back to her.
FADEL: Rojas Alvarez says she wants the man who killed her husband to be held accountable.
You have a 3-year-old daughter. I mean, what are you going to do now? What is your plan? Are you going to stay in Maine?
ROJAS ALVAREZ: (Through interpreter) I will while the investigation is ongoing, but not in the future. In other words, she's not going to study or make a life here.
FADEL: The Trump administration's immigration enforcement has divided and galvanized voters in this country. For some, the heavy-handed approach is exactly what they want in immigration. For others, the months of detentions, deportations and killings are a sign of just how much the country has strayed from its professed values. Those sentiments will go with them into the voting booth. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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