"Campaigns of cruelty" - Anna C. Everett
Over the past 18 months, ICE operations have expanded across the country as the administration pushes for mass deportations. Large-scale enforcement efforts have left communities fractured and scared.
For many of our Fellows, these operations have been in their own communities, in Minneapolis, New Orleans and others. We asked four of our Fellows to share their experiences working through these operations, the impact the ICE presence had on their work and clients, and what they have taken away from the past year and a half.
Anna C. Everett, a 2025 Justice Fellow working at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project in Portland, Maine, discusses her work to keep clients safe during Operation Catch of the Day, and what comes next. Anna is a graduate of University of Connecticut School of Law.
In January, ICE arrested over 200 individuals here in Maine in only 4 days in a surge in enforcement that they gave the racist and dehumanizing name, “Operation Catch of the Day”. This was devastating to our communities across the state, which has a small population to begin with. My clients were afraid to leave their houses, to go to work or school, or even to get essentials like groceries. As ICE carried out a campaign of cruelty, the people of Maine responded with a systematic and coordinated resistance effort in terms of both community organizing and legal advocacy.
I feel very proud that I got to be a part of my host organization Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project’s rapid response team. ILAP is Maine’s only statewide immigration legal services organization. I made calls to respond to people whose friends or family had been detained during this surge in ICE enforcement so that we could quickly get them legal help. We connected these individuals with attorneys at ILAP and to other services at community partner organizations. ILAP’s emergency legal response included seeking bond and/or habeas relief. We sought habeas relief to help stop ICE from transferring detained people to detention facilities across the country, a tactic that ICE uses to disrupt access to legal help and move people hundreds of miles away from their families. So far, my colleagues have already succeeded in getting many people out on bond and/or being granted habeas relief.
Alongside this rapid response work, I have also been working closely with clients to prepare adjustment of status applications to apply for their green cards as well as humanitarian applications, including petitions for relief under the Violence Against Women Act for survivors of domestic violence, U visas for survivors of violent crimes here in the United States, and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status for children who have been abused, abandoned, and/or neglected by one or both parents. All of these forms of relief offer critical protection from deportation and a pathway to safety. Our work at ILAP addressing the harm perpetrated by ICE during that January surge is ongoing, and unfortunately ICE and Border Patrol continue to unlawfully detain people here in Maine. I feel very certain that this is the place I want to be and the work I want to be doing to help in the fight against this cruel administration. I am so proud to be a part of the collaborative effort of resisting this horrific moment in Maine and in our country.
