I’m thinking about change. 

When asylum-seeking families first came to Sanford in 2023, they were welcomed. Individuals, families, nonprofits, churches and the city helped them get started here.

We parishioners of the UU Church provided rides to Portland for Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project training, visits to the South Portland immigration office and ICE check-ins in Scarborough. I understand that ICE staff treated these immigrants respectfully at those appointments.

On July 13, ICE agents killed a Biddeford man on the street. He was a neighborhood resident, a working man, a family man. Who can forget the mental image of his wife and young daughter seeing his body on the pavement? The Department of Homeland Security said that he was not the immigrant they were “targeting.”

By voting in a government that has allocated tens of billions of dollars for “immigration enforcement,” the American citizenry contributed to this change in ICE personnel and behavior.

Collectively, we need to take some responsibility for what happened in Biddeford. Then, let’s take responsibility for making the USA better by welcoming immigrants again. 

A few ways I can think of right now are: contact our Sen. Susan Collins and ask her to vote for H.R. 1689, a bill to continue legal protection for hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. (hundreds of whom live in Maine); support the bereaved family and organizations that protect immigrants; carry a whistle and the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition hotline number (207- 544-9989) to report ICE sightings; ask every political candidate what they will do to stop this sickening nightmare; and keep at it.

David Agan
Wells