Roughly 100 migrants protested outside of the Portland Exposition Building Wednesday morning, briefly blocking traffic along a busy Park Ave, to raise alarm about the “awful conditions” inside the shelter, with one man telling the Maine Wire that there was not enough food and limited ability to shower.
The migrants also complained about the uncertain future they face when taxpayer-funded benefits paying for their accommodations run out later this year.
“We have children here, but the life is not very good,” said Reagan Mayemba, a migrant staying at the Portland Expo.
Mayemba said that they will be “kicked out” in August without any housing or food.
“We don’t have the housing, we’re waiting for somebody,” Mayemba said. “The condition here is not good. We don’t make shower, no good food, no house.”
“The staff is there, but they’re doing nothing for housing,” he said.
“Those responsible who put us here at the Expo, said that there is no more solution for us. That’s why we cry out and want help. S.O.S.” One sign posted along the sidewalk outside the Expo said.
At one point during the protest, after the road had been cleared, a City of Portland truck pulled over outside of the Expo and an employee tried to remove the signs posted on the sidewalk.
The migrants yelled out for the employee to stop, and the employee reentered the truck and drove away.
Reporters from several of Maine’s media outlets have been prohibited from inspecting conditions within the shelter since it opened back in April.
Although several migrants said conditions inside the shelter were poor, and some even tried to bring journalists into the shelter to see for themselves, City of Portland employees prohibited multiple reporters from entering the building to inspect conditions Wednesday morning.
One TV crew from WGME was kicked out of the building after migrants had invited them in to see what the shelter looked like.
A Maine Wire reporter had a door shut in his face after requesting access — when asked why, the Expo worker said “Because I said so.”
The City of Portland said in April it had adopted no-press policy in order to protect the privacy of the migrant families, many of which include young children.
On two occasions, people who appeared to be City employees refused access to the Maine Wire while also refusing to give their names, positions, or confirm whether they work for the City or non-governmental organizations.
The Portland Expo, where the then-Maine Red Claws (now Maine Celtics) basketball team hosted home games, first opened as a family shelter for migrants in 2019 when the present wave of immigration from sub-Saharan African nations began.
That wave of migration was triggered when former Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling invited the Trump Administration to send migrants to Portland. Strimling continues to stand by his decision, despite the crises and now deplorable shelter conditions to which he contributed.
At the same time Portland’s ad hoc emergency facilities remain at or over capacity, Portland’s streets are replete with more than one-hundred Mainers living in tents, many of whom are suffering from substance use disorder and have trouble getting treatment resources and emergency housing.
Already there are indications that the problem Portland’s leaders created will not be contained to the Greater Portland area.
In May, several carloads of asylum seekers arrived in Sanford, Maine unannounced, triggering a small crisis that quickly exploded the municipalities General Assistance (GA) budget.
Currently, Unity College in New Gloucester is negotiating an arrangement that would house some migrants at the campuses’ facilities. The negotiations are still in the early stages, but one source has told the Maine Wire it’s something the Mills Administration is actively considering.
The Expo closed in time for the Red Claws to begin their basketball season in 2019; however, the government lockdowns in response to COVID-19 came as a curveball to migrant and homelessness policy in southern Maine.
Two tranches of federal money, the first authorized by former President Donald Trump and the second under President Joe Biden, allocated funding for the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program.
Although some states imposed a citizenship test on eligibility for that funding, Maine did not.
As a result, ERA funding paid to house thousands of migrants in hotels, motels, and homeless shelters, mostly in the Greater Portland area. In addition to the ERA money for housing, the migrants have been able to receive General Assistance (GA) welfare through various municipalities, most of which is reimbursed by the State.
Throughout this time, migrants have continued to arrive in Maine, with more than 1,000 having arrived this year. The migrants, mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, arrived in the U.S. as part of a wave of asylum seekers, with many of them reporting having first crossed into the U.S. at the border with Mexico.
The extent to which those arrivals are being facilitated by the Biden Administration is unclear.
On March 31, the Biden Administration provided the City with a memo advising it on how to deal with busloads of migrants arriving from the southern border; however, the Department of Homeland Security has not responded to inquiries and Freedom of Access Act (FOIA) requests that might shed light on how and why migrants continue to arrive in southern Maine.
That federal ERA money expired at the end of 2022, almost creating an eviction crisis in the middle of winter.
However, a last minute spending deal and some later spending agreements in Augusta set aside relatively small amounts of money to fund migrant housing until later this summer.
Maine’s migrant policy has generally lurched from one crisis to the next, and this summer appears to be no exception.
The Portland Expo opened again in April 2023 after shelters and motels in the Great Portland area reached capacity.
The Expo similarly reached capacity in less than one week.
The rate at which new migrants are continuing to arrive in Maine is currently unclear, but the pressure on emergency housing facilities is about to be exacerbated by a new city ordinance in South Portland that will prohibit hotels and motels from serving as de facto homeless shelters, as the have for the past three years.
This story will be updated.
22 Comments
Ed…thanks for your report. You state “The extent to which those arrivals are being facilitated by the Biden Administration is unclear.”. I refer you to the reporting done by Ben Berquam and Michael Yon on the illegals coming up from South America, through the Darien Gap. They both have done countless videos reporting that dangerous journey, the camps setup by NGOs, the phones and debit cards they give out and the sources of their funding. In Maine, the only resettlement NGO is Catholic Charities. You should see if they’ll give you an interview.
Should be plenty of room at the virtue signal hotel
welcome to America! We all have the same questions, but the only answer is get to work. nobody is coming to save you
Our “Open Border Policy” is what’s failing these people. We ‘re failing our own homeless why take in more? We aren’t the be all end all.
Ha! Wait until winter comes…
Jail has plenty of rooms.
Nobody here owes you anything. Nobody asked you here. Is it worse than whatever shithole place you came from? If so, perhaps you should leave. Try Russia, Afghanistan or North Korea. Go complain there and see how that works out for you.
We don’t need or want them in New Gloucester or anywhere in the state. House them all with Mills and all the Democrats who want this if they can’t find a place to live. No money from the state let Catholic Charities and all the other NGOs pay for these illegal aliens.
50 Bluebird busses a day are shuttling north to the border. Cartels are in control. Child sex trafficking is the world’s biggest money maker, over arms now.
Welcome to Amerika!
Indoor plumbing will be a distant memory soon, the newbie’s do not have the intellect to run our complex society.
South Africa, only took 30 years to collapse, no water, intermittent electricity.
Zimbabwe used to feed Africa, now cannot feed itself
Old Toad is 100% correct , I challenge anyone to tell me of a Country that has rejected Anglo-European Capitalism and is better off in any way ? Come now there must be some of you Commie Tards that think you have an answer ! This is just the further destruction of Western Civilization going on World Wide , just look at Ireland and the U.K. …. These Illegal Aliens bring Zero to the Table .. Whine bagging about Cultural Foods … Sorry Hannifords doesn’t carry Fermented Baboon in the meat section … Nothing to fear here folks with Winnie Ross in charge of the Maine House money will flow to these FREELOADERS
Maybe if the reporters dressed as drag queens they would be granted access.
They need to be moved to democrats front lawns. They wanted them here.
Go woke so we all go broke and the Democrats take no responsibility for the mess they’re creating.
Please…mills back yard…then maybe they will stop coming and stop complaining
Please…mills back yard…then maybe they will stop coming and stop complaining
100 or so ungrateful illegal aliens don’t like what Mainers have given, thus far, in the way of shelter, clothing, food. They have no American tights! Beggars should not be choosers! Democrats brought them to Maine; Democrats are responsible for the them. Clearly, they don’t like it here in Maine or the USA, for that matter. I suggest they go back where ever they came from and fix their own countries. Ours is pretty broken, as it stands right now. Maine already has a massive housing crisis, just for Mainers. Or, they could go to the homes of
Portland democrat representatives, knock on their doors and stay as long as they’d like.
This is totally ridiculous!
These ungrateful immigrants ARE NOT citizens
They DO NOT LEGALLY have the right to PROTEST
Arrest them & deport
The Portland liberals appear to really like illegals and invited them all here so I guess they own the problem. Maybe they should bus them to Falmouth or Cape Elizabeth and see how that works out. It might upstage Nantucket. My family were immigrants who came here legally. Shortly after my grandfather arrived here he was drafted into the Army in WWI and sent to France. America is going to pay dearly for this disaster in money and lives the years to come.
Do migrants think the US is a utopia where They will be treated special everytime they stamp their feet and throw a tantrum? We owe them nothing. If they have things to complain about, how about just go home?
Build the wall, close the border, stop the craziness!
They’re not migrants; they’re illegal aliens.
Well, they can always go back to whatever rock pile that came from, I’m sure the cots are softer and the showers warmer!