Advocates with the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, a Maine-based legal support organization, said family meetings increasingly centered on what parents and children should keep with them if routines are disrupted. During those consultations, advocates said families often described how enforcement fears were showing up inside ordinary evenings at home.¹
One mother living near Kennedy Park described sitting with her children at the kitchen table while snow tapped against the window and homework spread across the surface. Her daughter asked whether she would be working the next day. The woman answered that she expected to. Her son asked whether he still needed to bring his soccer uniform to school. She told him yes, then reminded him to pack his library book and winter boots. Advocates said conversations like these increasingly included reminders about keeping documents nearby and memorizing important phone numbers.¹
Effrax Saciid-Cisse, who immigrated from Somalia as a child and now runs a grocery store while working as an immigrant advocate, told WBUR he noticed the change first in customer behavior.
Regulars still came, he said. They stayed for shorter visits. Conversations ended earlier. Some customers stopped browsing and moved directly to checkout.
Asked what had changed, he told WBUR:
“The community is scared.”¹
Fear, in Lewiston, has not shown itself through demonstrations. Parents told WBUR they kept children home when enforcement rumors circulated. Several business owners said they began closing early, switching off neon signs while daylight still reflected off storefront glass.¹
Comparable shifts have appeared elsewhere.
In Minnesota, Reuters reported that more than 2,000 federal immigration personnel were deployed during investigations involving Somali-run childcare programs tied to alleged subsidy fraud.³ Several childcare providers told the Associated Press that parents shortened drop-off conversations and requested quicker pickup transitions following enforcement announcements.⁴ Some providers said they installed additional security cameras after being filmed by activists without consent.⁴
Public rhetoric surrounding Somali immigration has intensified alongside enforcement. At a 2019 rally in Minneapolis, Donald Trump warned that refugees from Somalia were being settled in Minnesota “without considering the impact on schools and communities.”⁵ During the 2016 campaign, he described Somali migration as turning parts of the state into a “disaster.”⁶
Backers of those remarks often say they reflect frustration with immigration enforcement gaps and misuse of social programs. Immigration investigators quoted in regional coverage have said aggressive fraud enforcement protects taxpayer-funded systems and maintains confidence in public benefits. Critics say rhetoric linking crime investigations to national identity risks broad suspicion toward entire communities.
Residents in immigrant neighborhoods often framed the issue more narrowly: whether daily routines were becoming harder to maintain.
In January 2026, speaking in Detroit, Donald Trump said the government would revoke citizenship from naturalized immigrants “from Somalia or anywhere else” convicted of defrauding U.S.