Text of the NYT article, copypasta from behind a paywall.
Fear of ICE Jolts a Maine Beach Town
Wells, like many U.S. tourist spots that rely on foreign labor, is fearful of immigration raids. The local police department’s agreement to collaborate with federal agents only adds to the anxiety.
On a leafy street in a small town, a small group of protesters wave flags and signs at passing cars.
Residents of Wells, Maine, and the surrounding area participate in a protest in front of the Wells police department. The protests have become regular events after the department agreed to a collaboration with ICE.
By David Goodman
July 28, 2025
The rituals start early in Wells, a popular tourist destination on the southern coast of Maine.
At 6:30 on a recent morning, a gaggle of dog walkers on Wells Beach strolled vigorously behind their canines as a blanket of fog lifted off the ocean.
At 7 a.m., a line of bleary-eyed customers was already snaking out the door at Congdon’s Doughnuts, the town’s 70-year-old doughnut shop.
Around 8 o’clock, yet another ritual, new this year, began as a small group of protesters gathered in front of the Wells police department, waving signs at cars on Route 1, Maine’s coastal artery. Wells recently became the only town in Maine whose police department agreed to a collaboration with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and the protesters’ objections to the partnership were clear.
“No ICE in our community,” read a cardboard sign held by a resident, Daria Cullen. “Fight ignorance, not immigrants,” read another. Many drivers honked and waved approvingly. A smaller number of drivers seemed to feel otherwise, flipping the finger at the protesters.
One Wells resident, Jim Loring, was walking past and shook his head. He confessed ignorance about the agreement with ICE, but said that the police “are supposed to be cooperating with ICE. I mean, that’s protecting the citizens of this town. Everyone should be cooperating with ICE, not fighting with them.”
The protests, which began in April, have become a weekly event in Wells, which relies on foreign workers to staff its hotels, restaurants and other businesses. Police leaders, in turn, are now taking a cautious approach and have yet to participate in ICE enforcement actions — but that hasn’t quieted the furor or the concerns about how Wells, and Maine broadly, will be seen by tourists and foreign workers.
Six months into Donald Trump’s presidency, national politics have crashed into this small New England resort town like a rogue wave.
Wells, along with many U.S. tourist areas, is in the tightening grip of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Nationally, one-third of workers in hospitality and tourism are immigrants. When ICE arrested about 40 immigrants on Martha’s Vineyard in May, it forced some local businesses to temporarily close.
Maine, too, is feeling pressure. Last year the state’s work force included 4,375 workers on temporary H-2B nonagricultural visas and 3,382 J-1 student visas, according to The Maine Monitor, an investigative news organization. Businesses around the state also rely on seasonal employees — who work as hotel housekeepers, restaurant cooks, dishwashers and in other essential roles — to return year after year. Some 5,800 undocumented workers fill other jobs in the state, including home care and farming, according to the American Immigration Council.
Wells and the neighboring towns of Kennebunk and Ogunquit employ hundreds of seasonal workers, including many from Jamaica, to work in restaurants and hotels. Congdon’s Doughnuts, for instance, has eight H-2B employees among its staff of 100. Congdon’s president, Jillian Shomphe, said she would hire more if she could find enough housing.
“They like it here,” Ms. Shomphe said of her international staff, shouting over the din of bakers, cashiers and customers.
Paul Patel, an Indian-born entrepreneur who owns 11 hotels on the Maine coast, put things in more existential terms. “The entire Maine coast from Kittery all the way up to Bar Harbor will not survive without international help,” he said.
The controversy in Wells began in March, when the town’s police department signed an agreement with ICE. The partnership deputizes police in this community of 12,000 to help enforce immigration laws, an authority normally reserved for federal agents.
The town’s police chief, Jo-Ann Putnam, said that in signing the agreement she wanted to provide officers with “another tool in their toolbox.”
It allows her officers “a safer way to deal with ‘designated criminal aliens,’” she wrote in an email. (She acknowledged that Wells is one of the safest towns in Maine.)
The agreement comes as Maine tourism is facing headwinds over some of President Trump’s actions and language. In June, about 30 percent fewer travelers crossed the border from Canada into the state, evidence of the Canadian travel boycott that was triggered by President Trump’s tariffs and his comments about making Canada “the 51st state.”
Then there are the challenges posed by Maine’s demography. “A lot of Black and brown people thought Maine was cold, old and white,” said Lisa Jones, who recently lived in Wells and owns Black Travel Maine, which is working to attract diverse visitors to the Pine Tree State. If the perception spreads that Maine towns are cooperating with ICE, it could undermine that effort, she said.
The president has waffled about immigration raids in hotels, restaurants and farms, briefly sparing these sectors in June, only to resume the crackdown days later, then teasing the idea of a “temporary pass.”
“We’re going to look everywhere,” Mr. Trump said last month.
ICE arrests in Maine have risen 49 percent since Trump came into office.
The arrests, say supporters of immigrant rights, are sweeping up people who are working in Maine legally, keeping everyone on edge.
Lisa Parisio, a policy director at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project in Portland, said, “We have tracked 17 minor traffic stops that have happened since March where more than 40 people have been handed over by local law enforcement to immigration officers.” This includes people with valid work permits and no criminal history, she said.
The crackdown has unsettled Maine’s business community. Patrick Woodcock, the chief executive of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, noted that the state’s economy contracted 1.2 percent the first quarter of this year, making it the slowest-growing economy in the Northeast. “Given the debate on immigration,” he said, there was concern that foreign workers would stay away from the state, further jeopardizing the economy.
“We do need to ensure that those who are authorized to work feel welcomed,” he said.
Mr. Patel, the hotel owner, said that if foreign visitors and workers stay away, Maine’s $9 billion tourism economy, which draws 15 million visitors annually, “will collapse like a domino.”
A ‘Wait-and-See’ Approach
Trump’s quest to enlist local enforcers landed with a thud in most of Maine, where Kamala Harris won 52 percent of the vote in the 2024 presidential election.
After Chief Putnam signed the memorandum of agreement with ICE on March 28, the ACLU of Maine said on its website that the agreement was an “open invitation to racially profile community members.” It noted that “municipalities have lost millions in legal settlements after violating people’s civil rights when enforcing federal immigration law.”
In June, the Maine legislature approved a bill restricting local police departments from carrying out immigration enforcement. But the Democratic governor, Janet Mills, has postponed until next year a decision on whether to sign the bill into law.
For now, the Wells police department can collaborate with ICE.
In the face of local anger, Chief Putnam announced on May 20 that she would take a “wait-and-see” approach to working with ICE.
“We are not participating in proactive immigration enforcement,” she said in a statement. She said that Wells police officers had engaged in 40 hours of online training with ICE, but that the officers had not yet been “credentialed.”
ICE still lists the department as an active partner.
Other Maine communities have taken note of the backlash in Wells. Monmouth and Winthrop have withdrawn their applications to partner with ICE. Paul Ferland, the police chief for both towns, told the Monmouth select board in April, “We’re not here to divide the community.”
While residents, activists and immigrants wait to see how the Wells-ICE collaboration plays out, a sense of unease has become part of the fabric of the normally tranquil town.
Janet Campagna, 68, retired in Wells four years ago after running an asset management firm in New York. She came here for “the people, the scenery, the beaches, the access to really good food and cultural venues.”
In May, Ms. Campagna testified in the Maine legislature in support of the bill to restrict local partnerships with ICE. She told lawmakers that the agreement in her community “has created an environment of fear and rancor.”
Foreign-born residents and workers around Wells have reacted to the ICE threat by trying to stay out of sight.
Many are scared, said a woman from southern Africa who lives near Wells and helps connect asylum seekers with social services and jobs, including in tourism businesses. The woman, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her safety.
She said that following the revelation that Wells police officers were working with ICE, some local immigrants would only attend church online and are keeping their children from school.
Mr. Patel, the hotel owner, said that when his foreign H-2B employees heard about the ICE collaboration, they came to him in a panic, asking if they should carry their passports and visas everywhere they went.
“Not knowing how to deal with it was very frustrating for me as a business owner and all my employees,” said Mr. Patel. He said he was assured by Chief Putnam that he and his workers did not need to carry their passport or worry about being stopped by police.
Chief Putnam said that the Wells police department is not actively collaborating with ICE. But the town does not plan to withdraw from its agreement “at this time.”
But such reassurances are not sufficient for some. Mufalo Chitam, the director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, said that the events in Wells have intensified the anxiety that immigrants already feel.
She noted that 200 families from Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo, most of them asylum seekers, had settled in the region in the last five years and now worked in area businesses. Turning police into immigration agents makes them fearful of calling law enforcement when they need it, she said.
“People fear for deportation, fear for arrest, people are afraid of helping other immigrants,” she said. “They are afraid there will not be anyone to defend them, and afraid to have their kids playing in the community because their kids might not return.”
“The normalcy of life,” she said, “has evaporated.”
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