David Agan lives in Wells.

American poet Woody Guthrie sang us a song about 28 migrants being deported from California’s Central Valley who died in a 1948 plane crash. He sang, “The radio says, they are just deportees.”

But Guthrie bids adios to real people, amigos named Juan, Rosalita, Jesús and Maria.

If we don’t know or care much about those being disappeared by our government today, letting them be faceless and forgotten, aren’t we complicit?

I appreciate the Portland papers for reporting on a few of the hundreds of Mainers kidnapped by government agents this year and for columnist Victoria Hugo-Vidal (“The worst ‘jokes’ you’ll ever hear,” Aug. 31 Maine Sunday Telegram) and op-ed contributor Gail Lemley Burnett (“No teacher should dread the first day back at school,” Aug. 10 Maine Sunday Telegram) telling us more.

I ask for all the papers of the Maine Trust for Local News to increase coverage of the lives of immigrants abducted or detained in Maine and all they’ve left behind. Please find and report these stories to us. We count on you. These are stories we need to hear (“Hundreds of thousands of anonymous deportees,” The Atlantic, Nov. 9).

We know that the bulk of those taken are not “the worst of the worst.” Most have no criminal records. Those detained or deported include Permanent Residents (people with Green Cards), asylum seekers with work permits following procedures prescribed by law, legitimate visa holders, long-time tax-paying residents, veterans, children without parents, parents without children and American citizens.

Our government is rounding up people by the hundreds of thousands indiscriminately. Maybe it’s not so indiscriminate. Aren’t they taking any brown, Black and Asian people with accents? Isn’t that ethnic cleansing?

The toughs performing these violent abductions are people, too. Do they have the real hate in their hearts that they’re manifesting? If so, how did they get this way? They couldn’t have been born like this. Is it the big money we’re paying them (well beyond what most of us have ever made) that gets them to be excessively violent on orders from high up?

Do they mask themselves so family and friends don’t know what they’re doing? Or is it to keep us from discerning whether they are actual professionals employed and trained and directed by a government agency and sworn to protect the Constitution? Or are they someone else?

Many of their clumsy and brutal assaults remind me of the pardoned Jan. 6 “patriots.” What ever became of them? And where are those Proud Boys who were once directed to “stand back and stand by”?

A lot of the federal agents wear the name “Police” on their flak-jackets. They’re not police. Our police are out protecting real law and order in our communities. These perpetrators are not the military either, even though they dress-up and carry heavy arms, pretending to be. Firing flash-bang grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper balls does not make them soldiers.

National Guard troops deployed on some city streets aren’t the ones carrying out this nasty business. They’re pawns in a game of intimidation. How is their unnecessary deployment affecting families, employers, the economy and Guardswomen and -men themselves?

And who are we, people who oppose these inhumane removals? We’re Mainers and Americans (politicians, clergy, citizens of all ages) speaking up and demonstrating against deportations with our voices, homemade signs and some in inflatable frog or unicorn suits. We’re engaging in free speech rights and will not be intimidated.

Citizens, including clergy and elected officials, are accompanying people to immigration court
hearings. Others are sitting for hours in those courtrooms to witness and report on proceedings there and aggressive hallway assaults by federal agents.

Neighbors are verbally confronting armed agents carrying out violent abductions in their communities. They’re blowing whistles to warn of SUVs with blacked-out windows and armed masked men in their neighborhoods.

All over, people are cautiously videoing kidnappings from a distance and posting them on social media so that families can see why their loved one didn’t get home for dinner. Then, families can start right away trying to locate and communicate with them.

Immigrant rights groups are offering safety advice to vulnerable people. A new hotline has been developed for tracking ICE activity here.

Citizens and officials in Maine are seeking access to the ICE detention center in Scarborough. Others insist that Cumberland County stop housing immigration detainees.

As has been accomplished from coast to coast, Mainers pressured ICE-contracted Avelo Airlines to cease commercial service at the Jetport, at least for now. Detained Maine people are getting legal help. We support the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, which that works with volunteer lawyers, the ACLU and UMaine law students to give legal assistance. Their work is worthy of your charitable consideration.

My neighbors, along with other Democracy in Action activists, persisted for months to help the police chief decide to cancel the 287(g) contract between the Wells Police Department and ICE. This makes Maine a state with no formal contracts that local police carry out ICE functions.

How can we establish this precedent statewide? Let’s all contact Gov. Mills to help her decide to sign LD 1971/HP 1315, the bill passed by the Legislature in June to “to clarify the relationship of state and local law enforcement agencies, including correctional facilities, and state employees with federal immigration authorities.”

Find the governor online — or out on the campaign trail.