32-year-old Gratien Milandou-Wamba, a Cumberland County Corrections Officer, is currently being held in a New Hampshire prison after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in April while driving to work.
Cumberland County Manager Jim Gailey confirmed on Tuesday that one of their corrections officers had been detained by ICE and stated that he is no longer employed by the county. Gailey provided little additional information.
More details emerged when Milandou-Wamba told the Portland Press Herald that he was arrested on his way to work on April 19 by plainclothes officers in an unmarked car.
He was then transported to an ICE processing center in Scarborough and was subsequently moved to the Strafford County Jail in NH, where he is currently being held.
Milandou-Wamba claimed to the Portland paper that he is still unaware of why he was arrested and said that ICE agents have refused to answer his questions. He told the paper that he arrived in the U.S. in May 2023 on a tourist visa from the Congo, where he claims he was tortured.
After arriving on a tourist visa, he says that he applied for asylum and received a work permit and social security number while his asylum claim was pending.
Despite saying that no ICE officers would answer his questions, Milandou-Wamba admitted that the arresting officers told him he had overstayed his visa, but he believed his work permit would allow him to avoid deportation as his asylum case was adjudicated.
The Maine Wire reached out to ICE requesting more information about the reason for his arrest, but received an automated response containing no relevant information. Federal authorities also declined to answer similar questions from the Portland paper.
According to Milandou-Wamba’s attorney, Wade McCall, his first asylum hearing is set for October. McCall admitted that his client’s visa had expired. McCall defended his client to the Portland paper, claiming that forgetting to renew one’s visa is common, and comparing it to forgetting to renew a vehicle registration.
The lawyer believes that ICE officials were alerted to Milandou-Wamba after he tried to purchase a firearm in September 2024, and his immigration status prevented him from doing so.
Milandou-Wamba was hired by Cumberland County in August 2024 after standards were lowered for jail employees, and they were no longer required to take English reading and writing comprehension tests.
He graduated from training in March 2025.
Notably, before he was hired, and less than a year after he arrived in the U.S., Milandou-Wamba was arrested in Portland in November 2023 for driving without a license.
Though it likely would not have impacted Milandou-Wamba’s case, since he was arrested by federal agents and is being held in NH, other immigration enforcement activities in Maine could soon be hindered by a bill passed through the legislature on Tuesday, essentially turning Maine into a sanctuary state.
The bill, LD 1971, imposes a variety of new restrictions on law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
[RELATED: Maine to Become Sanctuary State for Illegal Alien Criminals Under Bill Heading to Janet Mills’ Desk…]
Milandou-Wamba is not the first corrections employee detained by ICE in Maine this year. In February, ICE arrested Mauricio Romeu, 45, who had been hired to work at the York County Jail as part of their initiative to hire more “New Americans.” Unlike Milandou-Wamba, however, Romeu was not actively employed by the county at the time of his arrest, as he had failed his probationary period.
