A quarter of rural voters in U.S. Senate battleground states said they are more likely to make voting decisions based on their faith than on their finances, according to a new poll. This includes voters in Maine — one of the most rural states in the country — where Democratic Senate candidates Graham Platner and Gov. Janet Mills are fighting for a chance to unseat longtime Senate Republican Susan Collins.

The poll, published April 21 by the Center for Rural Strategies and Democratic research firm Lake Research Partners, surveyed 600 voters in rural counties across 13 states with key Senate races this year, including Maine and New Hampshire.

According to the poll, independent and weak partisan rural voters were twice as likely to make voting decisions based on personal economic situations as on religion. Democrats put much more weight on their economic situations. Republicans slightly favored their finances over faith in choosing who to vote for but were the most likely of any group to be guided by faith. The poll had a 4-point margin of error.

Maine is among the least religious states in the country, and, while faith institutions have long played a central role in the state’s rural communities, rural Mainers are less likely to identify with a specific religion than voters in other parts of the country. 

Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine in Orono, said religion helps explain Maine’s recent electoral history. President Donald Trump won Maine’s rural 2nd Congressional District by just 10 points in 2024, a much closer margin than he won rural voters nationally. Part of why rural Maine voters are less conservative than rural voters elsewhere, Brewer said, is because they are less religious.

“Rural Maine is not rural Alabama in terms of its faith profile by any means,” Brewer said. Even as the Republican Party has built up a voter registration edge in rural communities, Brewer said the state’s relative disinterest in religion has kept that trend less pronounced than in other parts of the country.

Churches have increasingly highlighted political divides in rural America, said Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies. The center opted to include several questions about faith in its recent poll to better understand how religious beliefs could influence upcoming elections.

When asked whether faith institutions unite or divide rural communities, Democrats were almost evenly split, but seven in 10 Republicans said those institutions united communities. Eight in 10 Republicans agreed that faith itself united communities, as did 55 percent of Democrats.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats to emphasize the importance of faith and faith institutions. Just two in 10 Democratic respondents said they attend a place of worship at least once a month, compared with nearly half of Republicans.

Still, respondents from both parties agreed that rural faith communities are important in times of crisis. 

Even though Democrats are less religious than Republicans, Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research, said the poll shows that they still largely view faith institutions favorably. Democratic leaders, she said, “should not cede that terrain to the other side.”

The poll also found that rural voters are largely pessimistic about both the U.S. as a whole and rural America, with a majority of respondents saying both are on the “wrong track.” More than 60 percent of rural voters backed Trump in 2024, but just 52 percent of poll respondents view him favorably today. 

Six in 10 rural voters support current immigration policies in the U.S., and nearly as many said they support mass deportation. Regardless of party, respondents rated the rising cost of living as their top concern, followed by health care.

TOPSFIELD — Jenna Stoddard is not sure where her son will spend his days when he starts preschool next fall.

Sending him to East Range II School would be convenient and continue a legacy. Stoddard lives just down the street and her husband graduated eighth grade there in 2007, one in a class of three. Topsfield’s population has dropped since then. The school now has five students, two teachers, few extracurricular activities and nobody trained to teach music, art, gym or health.

Stoddard’s son is too young for her to worry about that now. But the school may not be open by the time he is ready to go. Topsfield, a town of just 175 residents, will vote on whether to close the school on April 30. If it closes, the boy would likely be sent to preschool up to 30 minutes away in Princeton or Baileyville.

“That’s a pretty fair distance for a kid, a 4-year-old, who is now on a bus all by himself,” she said. “ school starts at , what time is the bus picking 4-year-olds up here? And what time is he going to get home at?”

Topsfield is an extreme example of how an aging, shrinking population and rising property taxes are forcing Maine towns to make difficult choices about their community institutions. Just over a dozen people came to a Wednesday hearing on the idea of closing the school. The crowd was mostly in favor of it.

“It is emotional to close the school in a town,” Superintendent Amanda Belanger of the sprawling Eastern Maine Area School System said then. “But we do feel it’s in the best interest of the students in the town.”

Teacher Paula Johnson walked a reporter through the building, which is small by Maine standards but cavernous for its five students. It has four classrooms, a small library, and a gymnasium. There is also a cook and a custodian for the tiny school.

A hallway trophy case serves as a reminder of when the school was big enough to field basketball teams. Topsfield’s student population has never been large, but the school’s population has dropped dramatically over the past few years. It had 25 students in 2023, with many coming from nearby Vanceboro, which closed its own school in 2015.

As the student population dwindled, the cost of sending students to Topsfield climbed. With fewer students to defray the costs, Vanceboro officials realized they would be paying $23,000 per student by the last school year. So they opted to direct students to nearby Danforth, where tuition was only $11,000 per student.

East Range lost seven students from Vanceboro, bringing its enrollment below 10. Under Maine law, that means the district may offer students the option to go elsewhere. Parents of the remaining students in grades 5 through 8 took the option and sent their kids to Baileyville. This school began the year with eight students; three have since pulled out.

In Topsfield, Johnson teaches four of the remaining five, holding lessons for pre-K through second grade in one classroom. Another one down the short hallway is home base for the other teacher. She focuses on the school’s lone fourth grader and occasionally teaches one of Johnson’s first graders, who is learning at an advanced level.

The other teacher, who holds a special education certificate despite having no students with those needs, plans to leave at the end of the school year. If the school stays open, that will leave Johnson responsible for educating Topsfield’s youngest students, though the school will need to budget for a part-time special education teacher just in case.

After 11 years at the school, Johnson is not sure what she will do if voters shut it down.

“We’ll see what happens here,” she said.

Topsfield’s school board, which operates as a part of the Eastern Maine Area School System, is offering its residents a choice: continue funding the school only for students between preschool and second grade at an estimated cost of $434,000 next year or send all students elsewhere, which would cost less than $200,000.

At Wednesday’s hearing, the attendees leaned heavily toward the latter option. Deborah Mello said she moved from Rhode Island to Topsfield years ago to escape high taxes.

“It’s not feasible for the town of Topsfield,” she said. “We cannot afford it and it’s not like the children don’t have a school to go to.”

Others bemoaned the burden of legal requirements for the small district, including the need to provide special education teachers even if they don’t need one. Board members also mentioned that in 2028, the district will become responsible for educating 3-year-olds under a new state law. That adds another layer of uncertainty to future budgeting.

“It sounds like we’ve been burdened something severely by this program and that program by the Department of Education, to the point where a small school can’t even exist,” resident Alan Harriman said.

“And that’s been happening for a long time,” East Range board chair Peggy White responded.

PARIS — In an emotionally charged meeting Monday night, the Select Board shelved long-standing discussions about restructuring or disbanding the Paris Police Department — at least for the coming fiscal year.

The board also voted Monday to send the department’s budget to voters at the annual town meeting in June.

Some who attended, including Budget Committee member and Paris Hill resident Robert Jewell, urged the town to explore alternatives to the Police Department and questioned the long‑term feasibility of continuing to operate it.

According to minutes from the Paris Budget Committee’s meeting April 7, Jewell outlined his efforts to investigate alternatives to the department.

Jewell told the Budget Committee that Oxford County Administrator Zane Loper estimated it would cost $695,950 to provide 12 months of police coverage through the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office, with four 24‑hour officers.

He also said informal talks between Paris and the Sheriff’s Office, as well as the Oxford Police Department, about restructuring the department have been underway since July 2025, according to coverage in the Sun Journal.

Paris Town Manager Natalie Andrews said in an email that at the 2025 town meeting, the Police Department requested an operational budget of $1,347,133.

Voters approved a reduced budget of $1,150,000, which required the department to cut staffing to stay within the appropriation.

For the 2026 town meeting, the department submitted an even lower operational budget of $1,090,719.45 to the Budget Committee — below the funding level previously set by voters.
The discussions prompted emotional responses.

Selectman Scott Buffington said the April 7 meeting grew “tense.” The discussion — and the emotion — returned Monday night.

Paris resident Lisa Billings Palmer said the Police Department is a vital part of the community.

“We need to have a sense of community and communication with our police department,” she said. “We need to have some solidarity here.”

As the conversation continued, Selectman Robert Ripley said, “I would prefer to keep our own Paris Police Department, but it has to be affordable and we have to be able to afford what we want and need.”

In the same discussion, Jewell said: “I believe in presenting facts, then people make decisions based on the facts. However, you need to understand, I’m not for or against. I made a comment in the Budget Committee meeting because I wanted to have a discussion.”

According to Jewell, talks with the Sheriff’s Office led him to believe that Paris could get by with “four, maybe five” officers, eliminating current overheads such as detectives, uniforms and fuel costs.

He also said that police union negotiations were driving up the department’s budgets.
“I just think it’s important that when we make a recommendation, we address it on the facts and what we see coming down the road. It’s not going to get any cheaper. It isn’t. In fact, we know it’s going to get higher. And we also know that statewide, the police unions that go in have 25 to 30 percent every single time to start,” Jewell said.

“Looking down the road, my concern for the taxpayer is that, at some point, (the department) becomes unsustainable.”

Budget Committee member Janet Jamison said that since the 2025 town meeting, at which Town Manager Andrews was asked by voters to investigate alternatives to the Police Department, the town has not made a serious effort to consider alternatives to the department.

“Natalie (Andrews) was given the direction to look for other alternatives to the Paris Police Department,” Jamison said. “Now, I never saw a report come out of there, so we never got what we asked for in the first place.”

Most in attendance agreed that it was too late in the budget process to make substantial changes to the Police Department’s budget for the coming year.

“This (discussion) should have happened way before the budget meeting happened,” Buffington said. “What happened last week at the budget meeting should never have happened.”

Jamison said the Budget Committee only agreed to this year’s police department budget because it was “too late” to make any changes.

But, according to Andrews, the emotional debate surrounding the Police Department will likely resurface every year.

“I mean, I don’t think it’s anything you ever put to bed,” Andrews said. “I’m just talking about part of the budget process, in my opinion, and the citizens will demand it like they did last year.”

Jamison also said rising Police Department costs are not going to “go away,” and the conversation is likely to return.

“Costs are going to keep rising, and we have to figure out if we truly can afford our own private police department, because we don’t have the resources that Oxford and Norway have,” Jamison said.

“So when I sit here and speak about this, it’s not that I have anything against the Paris Police Department. I’m thinking about the people I’ve seen come through the voting booth that are wearing rags, and I wonder how they afford their food, let alone their taxes. Those are the people I speak for.”

Selectman Steve Cronce said he supported consolidating departments to cover Oxford, Norway and Paris. He noted that the towns already share several services, including retail centers such as Walmart, interlocal solid waste agreements and ambulance services.

“We need each other. Paris needs Norway, Norway needs Paris, and Oxford needs both towns. We all need each other,” Cronce said. “And I think it’s a disservice to look only at the Sheriff’s Office as the alternative for the Police Department. I don’t think we’re looking far enough. I don’t think we’re doing enough research.”

But that possibility is apparently off the table. Andrews said the chiefs of the Norway and Oxford police departments told the town in a recent letter that they had “no interest” in forming a multitown response.

“I’m saying the townspeople voted, after a tense town meeting, for the Police Department,” Chief Mike Ward of the Paris Police Department said. “They gave us the budget number. We hit the number. Voters approved it. I don’t know why we’re doing this again.”

After a federal immigration enforcement surge began in late January, the Maine attorney general’s office set up an email tipline to collect information about potential civil rights violations and improper use of force amid reports that federal agents had smashed the car windows of people they detained and left them running in the street, followed observers home, and labeled one observer a “domestic terrorist.”

The Maine Monitor asked for the tips as part of a public records request to understand the types of concerns people were raising about agents’ treatment of immigrants or observers during the two-week operation in which agents detained about 200 people, only 11 of whom were recorded as having a criminal record. 

The tipline received about two dozen submissions related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity that the attorney general’s office deemed too sensitive to release to The Monitor, according to Danna Hayes, a spokesperson for the office. She said she could not provide more details about these complaints under state laws that protect the identities of informants and that keep information confidential ahead of legal proceedings.

The tipline remains open for the foreseeable future.

“e do continue to get credible, relevant concerns intermittently and want concerned individuals to have an easy way to report to us. We are also in contact with organizations collecting similar information since we know some might not feel most comfortable sharing sensitive information with law enforcement agencies,” Hayes wrote to The Monitor.

The rest of the 98 submissions to the tipline between Jan. 26 and Feb. 26, which the state released, largely had nothing to do with potential ICE abuses. People wrote in to report on those they suspected to be immigrants. They wrote in to say ICE agents were doing a good job. One person sent a picture of feces, another an ice-fishing meme.

Two Maine people have since joined a federal class action lawsuit claiming the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its subagencies retaliated against them for lawfully observing and recording federal immigration enforcement operations. A Maine man also filed a notice of claim against the same federal agency, requesting $7.5 million in damages after he said ICE agents threatened to pull him out of his car and arrest him if he continued to drive behind and watch enforcement vehicles.

The attorney general’s office announced the email tipline in an apparent attempt to tee up its own legal response to the action. But the tips that are currently public show what can happen when an email address is widely publicized. (Before providing copies of the tips to The Monitor, the attorney general’s office redacted the names and email addresses of private citizens.)

“My Ice wasn’t cold enough at the Irving in Freeport,” wrote one person. 

“I witnessed federal law enforcement actually enforcing the law. What the hell is going on here,” wrote another.

“Ice is causing problems at my house it is hanging from the eves and it may damage my shingles,” wrote a third.

Others applauded ICE. “The good men and women in ICE are to be welcomed here in Maine. If I see them here in Sedgwick, I will offer them a cup of hot coffee and cup cake,” someone wrote.

Fifteen emails came from people making unrelated complaints. One person tried to submit a complaint about Meta for disabling the person’s Instagram account for violating its standards.

Only a handful of the complaints made public raised concerns about immigration agents, though they mainly asked for legal advice or forwarded information reported in news outlets.

About 39 of the emails were listserv notifications where someone signed up the tipline email to receive updates and notices from various government agencies, including from the city of Bath and the state of New Hampshire. Hayes said someone at the office had to unsubscribe from each one. 

“Unfortunately I have heard anecdotally that the spamming is consistent with other tip lines/reporting portals,” Hayes told The Monitor. 

The Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition also receives calls from people expressing racist comments or “general meanness” to its hotline, which launched in the fall and receives between 80 and 200 calls per day, Senior Program and Community Engagement Manager Hunter Cropsey said. Some callers misunderstand the hotline’s purpose — to connect people with resources and track potential immigration enforcement sightings — and instead call to report their neighbors to immigration officials.

Bad faith callers account for less than 10 percent of all calls, Cropsey said, and volunteer operators curtail disruptions to the hotline by not picking up anonymous calls. They document and block bad faith callers who do not anonymize their numbers.

“There are many, many more Mainers out there who are trying to help their neighbors and help their community stay fed and safe,” Cropsey said. “That is really the thing I choose to look at.”

Staff reporter Rose Lundy contributed reporting.

Officials in western Maine town of Eustis are seeking ways to expand the local housing supply, and they’re the first to join a new initiative by a major state nonprofit.

The town is the first to host officials from GrowSmart Maine to discuss its new “Housing Forward Communities” initiative, which is based in Franklin County and aimed at building community consensus in favor of new housing projects.

The nationwide housing shortage has spiked property values and taxes across the state. As the tourist economy drives new growth in northwestern Maine, Eustis, where most properties sit empty for much of the year, has little housing available.

“If somebody wanted to move to town, they’re not going to find a place,” Town Clerk Rachel Williams said. “And they’re really not going to find … an affordable place.”

The donor-funded program aims to host community conversations around housing, create a local “housing action committee” and help the town draft resolutions guiding future planning decisions.

Rent in Eustis has more than doubled in just a few years, according to data in the state’s housing portal compiled from Zillow and the U.S. Census Bureau. The median rent in the town, which lies near the ski resort at Sugarloaf but an hour’s drive from the nearest major service center in Farmington, was $916 in 2024. It was about $450 in 2019.

Vacancy rates are also dropping, according to census data. In 2014, more than a quarter of rentals were available. In 2024, that number was 5.3%. It’s similarly hard to find a permanent home in the town, with 4.5% of owned homes vacant and for sale in 2014 compared with none in 2024.

The town’s thirst for more housing has come up repeatedly at local meetings as the limited tax base has strained budgets. In minutes from a February town meeting in which officials discussed a proposed school budget increase, the exchange is summarized by saying educators “have cut where they can.”

“We need more housing,” the minutes read.

Williams said that it’s difficult to find workers in Eustis. Stratton Lumber, the local sawmill, has had to hire workers from far away as a result. A manager there directed questions from a reporter to the mill’s owner, who could not immediately be reached for comment.

Voters in nearby Kingfield killed a housing project in 2024 that was planned for a 7-acre plot behind Dollar General, putting it among the towns that have resisted attempts to build more housing. GrowSmart Maine’s new program for Franklin County aims to preempt similar cases.

“There is often local resistance to new proposals,” GrowSmart Maine’s Associate Director Harald Bredesen said. “The purpose of this program is to kind of have discussion first … so that the community doesn’t have to say yes no to a particular proposal, but rather, can kind of help shape the kinds of proposals and attract, maybe, the kinds of developers that they want.”

MACHIAS — A Machias eighth-grader turned his passion for academic competitions into a trip to Washington, D.C. to represent Maine in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in May. 

Tristan Singh, who turns 14 in May, bested 13 other young spellers at the Maine State Spelling Bee at Bowdoin College last weekend. He’ll be one of about 250 young spellers competing for a first-place $50,000 prize at the national event, which is being held at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

“I tied for fourth in the state spelling bee last year. So, of course I was eager to win this year,” said Singh. “And then I made a bet with myself that there’s a neon dance coming up, and I said that I would only go if I won.” And, if he lost, he would go beforehand to help set up the dance.

Singh won the state bee by correctly spelling “stratosphere.”

The teen can’t say how many hours he’s put in preparing for this competition. “If I kept track, that would take away time from well, in this case, studying, right?” he said.

There are books and apps that he uses, but his biggest piece of advice for other kids? “Just make sure you really want to do this. Have rocket fuel motivation. Be dedicated,” he said. 

That focus moved him from being one of 10 million students competing in bees in classrooms and auditoriums in schools across the country to heading for a national stage. 

His mother, Elizabeth Singh, who teaches fourth grade at Rose M. Gaffney Elementary School, is quick to point out that Tristan does more than study. 

“He’s the senior patrol leader in Boy Scouts. He runs cross country and likes to help keep stats for basketball and baseball,” she said. “He’s more well-rounded than he is letting on.”

The teen is also a finalist this year for the National Civics Bee, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation that encourages middle schoolers to think about solutions for community issues. His essay, “Website Wonder,” landed him the opportunity to compete in the Maine State Civics Bee in June, where he’ll answer quizzes and pitch community solutions. 

“When COVID hit, a lot of the academic stuff stopped and getting it back has been tricky,” said Elizabeth Singh. “That’s something he’s really been passionate about and thinking about — how can we get other schools to participate in this?” 

There are fees involved. Beginning in August, teachers and administrators can enroll their schools in bees for $199. Tristan worries the cost could prevent kids in small rural schools from getting to participate. If he should win a cash prize at Nationals, he’d like to use some of it to help other schools enroll.

In Washington County, only Rose M. Gaffney and Princeton elementary schools participate in the Scripps Spelling Bee. 

Newsrooms sponsor the Scripps Spelling Bees across the country and over 10 million children participate in school bees. In Maine, the bee was presented by the Maine Trust for Local News.

“We’re really proud to host the Maine State Bee. We think about it the same way we think about high school sports,” said Stefanie Manning, president and publisher at the Maine Trust. “The academic kids, the readers — they deserve their moments too.”

The Maine Trust also coordinates Maine’s school-level and county bees for Scripps. This year 73 schools registered from 14 counties, according to Manning. Each school was invited to send up to two spellers to the county bee and then each county could send one speller to the state bee.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee started in 1925 and the last Mainer to win nationally was Portlander Sarah Wilson in 1934.

Visit spellingbee.com starting May 1, 2026 to see the broadcast schedule and to follow Singh through the competition.

HARRINGTON — Voters enacted a Solar Energy Ordinance on Monday allowing personal and commercial solar installations for on‑site use within town limits, with Planning Board approval, while prohibiting utility‑scale solar farms and any for‑profit power generation.

The vote, held during the annual town meeting at Narraguagus High School, drew overwhelming support, with no one in the 35‑person audience raising an objection.

According to the ordinance, its intent is to preserve Harrington’s rural character and “prevent industrial encroachment incompatible with community values.”

The ordinance authorizes personal ground‑mounted systems and personal and commercial roof‑mounted solar installations, but it does not authorize power to be distributed to the grid for profit.

The commercial provision applies only to Harrington businesses that install systems to power their own operations.

“Net metering is permitted for energy offset, but no profit may be derived” from the system, according to the ordinance.

Ground‑mounted systems may not be taller than 25 feet, with minimum setbacks of 25 feet from all property lines. Setbacks increase to 45 feet from town roads and 70 feet from state roads, according to the ordinance.

The systems may not exceed 2,500 square feet of total project airspace.

Owners of ground‑mounted systems must keep them maintained, including clearing vegetation, and must “reasonably” screen them from public roads and neighboring properties with landscaping, fencing or other features.

Roof‑mounted systems are exempt from screening requirements.

Owners must remove any system that remains nonoperational for more than a year and restore the site to its reasonably original condition.

All personal and commercial installations are subject to Planning Board approval.

Officials in Palmyra are negotiating with Corinna over a fire and emergency services contract after ditching a decades-old deal with Newport.

Maine’s small towns commonly share fire and emergency coverage through contracts with neighboring communities. For more than 20 years, that meant Newport’s Fire Department covered calls in Palmyra. Late last year, Newport more than doubled its asking price, something Newport Fire Chief Jeff Chretien said had not ever been raised.

“The Select Board just let it go for 20 years without addressing it and it was time to readdress it,” he said.

The strife over fire protection costs in the Newport area comes as small towns across the state are reeling from years of high costs, causing discontent and difficult budget talks in both local service hubs that have been hit hardest by cost increases and the communities around them.

Newport is in the first category. Homeowners there pay more than 3% of income in taxes, double the amount of Palmyra residents, according to data provided to the Legislature. Part of this is because Newport was subsidizing the smaller town’s fire service, Chretien argued.

When the contract was initially finalized, Newport’s charge was set at 20% of the fire department’s operating costs. Last year as the town reassessed, it found that Palmyra still accounted for about 20% of the department’s calls. So they asked for 20% of the department’s operating budget.

After decades of inflation, that meant a jump from about $39,000 to $88,000 per year. Chretien said that to give Palmyra time to adjust to the increased cost, that price would increase gradually over three years. Chretien called the offer “very, very fair.”

But it didn’t land well in Palmyra, which allowed the contract to expire at the end of December. The town was not going to have any money available to absorb the increase unless voters allowed them to at the town meeting next week.

Palmyra is now negotiating with Corinna, which is covering the town while negotiations continue. Michael Cray, the Palmyra Select Board’s vice chair, has asked Corinna to accept a price of $40,000 based on the 54 calls covered by Newport last year.

Chretien said that while his department covered 54 calls classified as a fire response, they responded to 191 calls in total in 2025. He also added that Newport is continuing to cover Palmyra in emergencies and has responded to 34 calls there since the contract expired.

Cray said the deal is likely to be approved, which may make the upcoming town meeting easier.

“For the fire protection part of it, there won’t be a substantial increase in taxes,” he said.

Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness for the first time has trained about 30 doulas to help families leading up to and during birth as other birthing services across the state have ceased.

Lisa Sockabasin, co-CEO of the health organization based in Bangor, said she heard from concerned community members about the crisis of closing birthing centers across Maine, so Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness decided to help fill in the gaps.

Most of the participants in the late-September training were Indigenous, though some were not, she said. A tribal chief participated, as well as other community members. The trainers were Indigenous doulas from Canada.

Sockabasin said it is important to have Indigenous doulas in particular because they can incorporate cultural aspects into their work.

“It’s about that time being honored, being sacred. It’s a very spiritual time,” she said. “That birth is a ceremony.”

Doulas are nonmedical care workers who provide educational, physical and emotional support to pregnant, birthing and postpartum people and their families. A 2023 survey of 45 doulas, conducted by the Maine Doula Coalition, found they were overwhelmingly female and white, and highly concentrated in southern Maine. 

Sockabasin said doulas with her organization will also be able to connect families with other services for challenges related to substance use disorder, poverty and mental health. 

Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness serves the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, the Aroostook Band of Micmacs, the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township, the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point and the Penobscot Nation.

“When you wrap love and support around an individual, they thrive,” Sockabasin said. “If they have a baby inside them, that baby is going to thrive, too.”

Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness had hoped to start up a doula program soon, but the current federal funding landscape has made that more difficult, Sockabasin said. It is now likely the organization will have to wait for additional funding or until doulas can be reimbursable by MaineCare, the state’s version of Medicaid.

Sockabasin said conversations with the state around reimbursement are ongoing, but any change likely wouldn’t take effect until 2027.

Sockabasin said her broader goal would be to have an Indigenous birthing center in Maine. Minnesota recently opened one, with support from the state’s Legislature. She’d like to see the same thing happen here.

Eleven birthing units in Maine have closed in the last decade, four of which closed in the last year. The closures leave 17 hospitals with delivery wards remaining across the state.

The training was funded by part of a $385,000 grant Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness received from the state, Sockabasin said.

Around 10 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22, Westbrook pastor Carlos Nzolameso received a call from a member of his congregation who was searching for a roommate. Evaristo Kalonji, who organizes and plays the music at the church, had not shown up to his job at Chipotle.

Several other congregants also reached out to Nzolameso, concerned that Kalonji, an asylum seeker from Angola, was missing. Nzolameso, who leads the predominantly Portuguese-speaking Rehoboth Christian Church, said Kalonji, who has no family in the United States, is like a son. 

He set out to find him.

Nzolameso spent a couple hours searching for Kalonji in and around South Portland, where Kalonji lives. Nzolameso checked with the police department for any traffic stops or accidents. His efforts yielded no answers. He weighed checking the hospital next. 

It wasn’t until the pastor made a final trip to retrace Kalonji’s commute that he spotted his car — a black Ford Fusion — two minutes away from Kalonji’s home. It was parked on Westbrook Street in South Portland. The car was unlocked, he said, and the keys were on the floor.

“I was devastated. I couldn’t even believe it,” said Noemia Nzolameso, the pastor’s daughter, when she heard the news. “I was in shock. Literally.”

Though Kalonji has no criminal record, the pastor suspected he could have been detained by federal agents as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began a widespread immigration enforcement operation in Maine last week. 

But Nzolameso had no way of confirming what had happened until later that day, when he received a brief call from Kalonji, who said he had been detained by immigration agents. He was calling from a detention center in Burlington, Massachusetts, and seemed confused as to why he was there, Nzolameso said.

Kalonji has a pending asylum case, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the U.S. Department of Justice. Kalonji originally had a court date scheduled for this year, but it was recently postponed to May 2028, Nzolameso said. 

Nzolamesco later learned that Kalonji was then moved to a detention center in Central Falls, Rhode Island, according to an online federal database.

On Saturday, a lawyer for Kalonji filed an emergency petition in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging the detention, according to online court records. The detainee locator system showed Kalonji was still in Rhode Island as of Jan. 28.

A background search in TLOxp, a database from TransUnion, returned no criminal records for Kalonji. 

The Maine Monitor asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday why it had detained Kalonji. The agency had not provided an answer as of Wednesday morning.

Officials from homeland security told Fox News last week, when the operation started, that it was targeting approximately 1,400 people in Maine. So far, the agency claims to have detained more than 200 people in Maine. It has only released limited names but said in a press release that it is going after “the worst of the worst.”

The Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, however, said that most people who have been detained and sought its help are going through lawful immigration processes and have no criminal background.

A recent report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that nearly three in four people detained by ICE in October and early November last year had never been convicted of a crime.

Last week, Maine Monitor reporting found that a mother of four with no criminal history was detained after dropping off a child at school, and a civil engineer with no criminal history was detained by masked agents who smashed his window and left his car running in the street.

Nzolameso, who has been leading the church for five years, has found himself navigating a challenging immigration detention system on behalf of some of his congregants. Kalonji is the fourth congregant of his church to have been detained by immigration officials in the past six months, Nzolameso said. Three other men were detained between August and December, he said, and only one has been released. 

“I’m the pastor. I need to take care them,” he said. “I preach the word of God for them. But I need to care for them, too, because they have no family.”

While sitting at a desk in the basement of his Westbrook home, Nzolameso’s phone rang repeatedly as church members tried to reach him. On the night before Kalonji was detained, Nzolameso had told his congregants to reach out if they had any concerns as the immigration operation took on a new force in Maine.

Many church members have stopped showing up to services, he said, which has led him to start preaching online. Others are not going to work.

“Everybody is afraid,” Nzolameso said. “They don’t know what’s going to happen.”

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