Asylum Seekers Overwhelm Shelters in Portland, Maine

Facing an impending humanitarian crisis, Portland Family Shelters Director Mike Guthrie has a simple message to anyone who will listen, “We need help!”

Guthrie, a hands-on, frontline worker in the effort to feed, clothe, and house a continuous flow of foreign nationals arriving in Portland by airplane or bus from the U.S. southern border, told The Epoch Times, “Our family shelter facilities, our warming room, and even area hotel space is at capacity. We have maxed out our community resources.

“The time is coming when I’m going to have to look a dad in the face and tell him and his family that I don’t know where they’re going to sleep tonight.”

The Portland Family Shelter is a complex of four rented buildings in various states of renovation located in the heart of downtown.

Some of the structures are gradually being converted into small apartments where up to four families will share a single kitchen and bathroom.

All four buildings are overflowing their present capacity.

“The intake is greater and faster than we can process,” Guthrie said.

To accommodate the stream of new arrivals, the family shelter program has in recent months placed 309 families (1,091 people) in eight hotels located in five neighboring municipalities spread over three counties of southeastern Maine’s prime tourist and vacation region.

Those moves, with their attendant complications and problems, have resulted in some pushback from the local Mainers who fear their prized relaxed lifestyle may never be the same.

And they resent not having a voice in any of it.

“It’s just part of the state government’s plan to bring the slums to the suburbs,” said a Mainer from the resort and tourist community of Kennebunkport, a small town about 28 miles down the Atlantic coast from Portland.

“The United States cannot rescue Africa.”

Coming out of the Kennebunkport post office, long-time Mainers Virginia and Robert shared their opinions on what the locals see as the “invasion” of Maine by immigrants.

Virginia commented, “We have sympathy for the asylum seekers, but resources are over-extended and now it’s going beyond Portland.”

“Eventually, it’s going to impact our quality of life,” Robert said.

Pressures on Portland’s homeless shelter capacity last year inspired a York County community action group to obtain a federal grant to help house the city’s regular homeless population.

The plan included renting half a dozen large motels in a three-mile corridor in the heart of southeastern Maine’s Atlantic-shore tourist region.

Motels within walking distance of shopping opportunities were selected.

The motels close in the off-season, so it appeared to some people to be a win-win arrangement.

Included in the plan was the small, quiet, resort town of Wells, located about six miles from Kennebunkport.

Though the program sheltered hundreds of individuals from the brutal Maine winter, the resulting wave of never-before-seen vandalism, burglaries, and other property crimes in the commercial district forced the city of Wells to evict every tenant for violations of several municipal ordinances.

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In Portland, 500 single asylum seekers are housed in a municipal shelter separate from the family shelter, according to a spokesperson for the city. It too is at capacity.

Guthrie told The Epoch Times that city authorities have publicly notified what he calls “the feeder sources” at the southern border and in Washington D.C. about the immigration crisis unfolding in Portland.

The city administration asked Border Patrol, Health and Human Services, and participating non-profits to stop sending asylum seekers to Portland until sufficient resources become available to adequately care for them.

But the force of the city’s request was blunted when it announced immediately after the notification that it would not turn anybody away, acknowledged Guthrie.

Guthrie stated that the city asked Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, to call out the National Guard to set up emergency shelters and feeding stations but has not yet received an answer.

On June 2, in remarks before the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, Mills committed the state to building a new emergency shelter in the city and said she was working to create additional housing for asylum seekers in the area.

She also spoke of the desirability of the in-migration as a source of labor to fill many existing job openings.

Speaking of the migrants, Mills said, “We need the workforce here. We want them to be available for work. Some of them come with incredible skills and experiences that we can employ.”

One long-time Maine resident, who visited the Portland Family Shelter to see the situation for himself, told The Epoch Times, “Mike Guthrie is like a man frantically trying to bail out a sinking rowboat, while his superiors continue to drill holes in it.”

During the month of May, the family shelter took in 79 families consisting of 262 individuals with no slowdown in sight, Guthrie said.

“220 people turned up in just 20 days. We’re trying to help anybody that comes to the door. Thus far, nobody coming to us has had to sleep outside but we can no longer guarantee shelter upon arrival,” he said.

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The vast majority of the new arrivals at the family shelter in Portland have come from Angola and the Congo in Africa, with some coming from Haiti in the Caribbean.

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Guthrie explained that the route to Portland for most of the asylum seekers begins in chaos-torn western equatorial Africa.

“They cross the Atlantic to South America. They go up through South America and then north through Central America, ending up in northern Mexico, from which they cross the southern border into the United States.

“At that point, they present themselves to Border Patrol.

“A new arrival tells Border Patrol ‘I am here to seek asylum. If I go back home, I will be killed. I fear for my life.’ That’s the difference between an asylum seeker and an immigrant,” he said.

Those three short sentences guarantee a person’s admission for a lengthy stay in the United States as his or her claim is adjudicated.

Guthrie went on to explain, “After some additional questioning, the individual is issued minimal paperwork by immigration authorities and told they will be contacted about a formal hearing on their asylum plea. They are then turned over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”

Most are given cell phones.

Public servants with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and representatives of various American non-profit, philanthropic organizations, ask the asylum seekers where they want to go in the interior of the United States to await their asylum hearing.

For many, their answer is “Portland.”

“They are then put on buses or airplanes and sent on their way,” Guthrie said.

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Guthrie said that Portland is often recommended to people enroute to the United States by relatives who are already living in the city.

“Once they get here, the majority of the new arrivals want to stay in Portland. They tell their relatives and friends about us,” he said.

Jessica Grondin, the city’s director of communications and media, told The Epoch Times in a phone interview, “Portland is happy about and proud of our good reputation as a ‘Welcoming City.’ We presently have a large Somali population, as well as many Iraqis and Afghans who arrived here previously.”

Grondin said that several busloads of asylum seekers recently shipped off to Washington D.C. by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, ultimately made their way to Portland.

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Guthrie said that the influx asylum seekers has exceeded the city’s ability to offer basic services.

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While most of the new arrivals speak Portuguese, some speak French, Lingala, or another tribal language. Many are bilingual, but none speak English.

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The Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition (MIRC) is providing asylum seekers residing in hotels and motels with some culturally appropriate foods such as fufu (an African staple), goat meat, greens, chicken, and rice, he said.

A lot of the accommodations do not have kitchens.

According to Guthrie, the cost per motel room is between $250 and $350 dollars per night and rising as the tourist season begins.

MIRC is part of a network of 85 statewide organizations involved in the care of the thousands of asylum seekers already here and those that are arriving daily.

Guthrie said the state is footing 70 percent of the family shelter’s expenses, with the city making up the remaining 30 percent.

But Guthrie says that getting the children into school is among the best assistance that can be provided.

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More than 60 different foreign languages are spoken by students at Portland area schools, further complicating every task associated with education.

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