Through the winter, the families streamed into Portland, bringing stories of violence and persecution in their home countries in central Africa. Portland’s shelter for homeless families soon filled to capacity, so the city put mats on the floor of a Salvation Army gym for 80 more people.
Then that, too, wasn’t enough. This month, 250 migrants from Africa arrived in this northeastern city of roughly 67,000 residents in the span of just a week, overflowing the overflow space and forcing Portland to hastily convert a basketball arena into an emergency shelter. Urgent calls went out for interpreters who could speak French, Portuguese and Lingala, a language spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo. City Council meetings were given over to grappling with how Portland would pay for all of this — and the possibility that still more migrants might be coming.
It is a bit of a mystery in Maine, one of the oldest and whitest states in the country, how Portland has become a focal point for a sudden surge of migrants, mostly from Angola and Congo, who are seeking asylum.
Maine has long wrestled with an aging work force, and some leaders view immigrants as a welcome answer to the state’s struggles to lure younger people to live and work here. Still, the sheer numbers — and the suddenness of the latest arrivals — have opened up a debate about how much Portland should be doing to help immigrants and whether it should entice more of them to come.
“I love the fact that these folks are coming here, and they want a better life, and they’ve chosen Portland,” Jon Jennings, the city manager, said. “But at the same time, I’ve got to figure out how to pay to pave streets and fix sidewalks and all of the things that are uniquely responsible to a municipal government.”
There is friction over the issue, even inside City Hall.
“If we have discovered the magic wand that will bring young families to Portland to help us build the next generation, why would we want to stop that, especially when it costs us so little money?” Ethan Strimling, Portland’s mayor, said.
The migrants arriving in this city have undergone a grueling journey, traveling by air or sea to South America, and then north on foot and by bus to the southern border of the United States, where most of them were arrested by border officials and released with notices to appear in immigration court after they declared their intention to seek asylum.
Nearly 800 migrants from Africa have been apprehended on one stretch of the Texas border and released by authorities since the beginning of October; the surge surprised and puzzled immigration officials, who are more accustomed to seeing Central American families crossing the border. Hundreds of African migrants arrived just this month and were taken to San Antonio, where Catholic Charities provided bus tickets to Portland and other cities that the migrants named as their destinations.
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