Francoise Makuiza’s son became emotional as he recalled the threats and violence his family faced as refugees in Colombia.
His voice swelled with pride as he recounted his mother’s efforts to secure visas for herself, her husband and her children in 2011 so they could fly to the United States, where they later applied for asylum.
Makuiza, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, has worked several jobs to support her household — most recently providing professional support to adults in an assisted living facility alongside her husband, according to the family.
“Our parents, they fled their countries to make a better life for us,” her son, King Diabanza-Makuiza, said in an interview Thursday.
Makuiza is one of many asylum seekers swept up in recent immigration enforcement in Maine as part of an operation the Department of Homeland Security has said was focused on detaining people considered the “worst of the worst” with criminal histories. More than 200 people were arrested in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge.
Several immigration law experts said the federal government is detaining more asylum seekers than under previous administrations.
Makuiza has been authorized by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to work in the country, according to a copy of her card that was included in federal court records, and state records indicate she has no criminal history in Maine. Recent court filings by federal prosecutors representing ICE say Makuiza overstayed her visa but do not address her application for asylum or work authorization.
On Friday, Makuiza was ordered released by Chief U.S. District Judge Lance Walker, who found she had been arrested without an administrative warrant.
“I know that she and her family are ecstatic,” Makuiza’s attorney Kristine Hanly said Friday evening, while her client’s family was headed to pick her up from where she was being held outside of Boston. “I know that even the weeklong detention has been very trying for their family, and very scary for the family.”
Lawyers, friends and family members say several other asylum seekers were also detained by ICE in Maine during the recent operation and are still in federal custody as of Friday.
An 18-year-old accounting student, whose family applied for asylum after fleeing persecution in the western African country of Gabon, was arrested by ICE at Market Basket in Westbrook on Jan. 20; an asylum seeker from Angola was reporting to a scheduled check-in with immigration authorities Tuesday when he was apprehended at ICE’s Scarborough field office; and a 38-year-old Guinean man was pulled from his car by agents on Jan. 21.
The Guinean man and his wife, also an asylum seeker, had just picked up a passport for their 1-month-old baby, who was in the back seat when agents shattered the driver’s side window.
Neither DHS nor ICE responded to requests for comment about how many known Maine asylum seekers the agency has arrested and why they’re being arrested.
“I don’t understand why they’re taking these people,” Diabanza-Makuiza said Thursday. “It’s not making the world a better place. People are having their families taken away from them.”
THE ASYLUM PROCESS
Being detained can limit access asylum seekers have to their attorneys and make it harder to prove their cases, lawyers say. It also takes an emotional toll, said Jon Bauer, director of the University of Connecticut School of Law’s Asylum and Refugee Clinic.
“Most asylum seekers have been through horrible experiences in their home country, extreme violence from domestic abusers or from gangs or from repressive governments,” Bauer said. “And it is horribly traumatic for them, after going through those experiences, to be placed in immigration detention and told you have to make your cases best you can, while detained in front of an immigration judge.”
Federal law states that every person who enters the country has the right to apply for asylum, regardless of whether they came to the U.S. legally. People applying for asylum are generally required to do so within one year of arriving, but the law allows some applicants more time if they can show any “extraordinary circumstances” justifying the delay.
If granted asylum, a person is then allowed to apply for a green card a year later and, eventually, citizenship.
Under the Trump administration, immigration agents are detaining more people in the country without lawful permanent status, which can include asylum seekers.
President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security in 2025 to “take all appropriate actions” to detain immigrants awaiting the outcome of their removal proceedings. That directive also reached the Department of Justice, which oversees immigration courts, where bond hearings have been denied to many people detained by immigration authorities.
Across the country, federal judges have been asked to weigh in on the constitutionality of these detentions.
U.S. District Court judges in Boston and California recently ruled that the DOJ’s denial of bond hearings goes against nearly 30 years of precedent.
Civil rights lawyers say the government has historically allowed asylum seekers and other immigrants to request bond, regardless of whether they’ve overstayed a visa or arrived without one. Once released, they have to attend regular check-ins with immigration authorities and avoid getting into legal trouble.
Kim Griswold, a professor of family medicine and psychiatry at the University at Buffalo, said she has observed the trauma experienced by asylum seekers and refugees while treating them. Griswold, who spoke generally about the traumatic experiences of asylum seekers, did not weigh in on current federal policies.
She said the trauma often spans generations and can have a serious effect on families fleeing persecution and torture.
“They’re frightened,” Griswold said. “They’re seeking safety. They may or may not totally understand the system.”
‘I’M TRAUMATIZED’
An Angolan mother whose husband was arrested in Maine said she and her children have spent the past week in hiding, afraid ICE will come for them.
Gladise and her husband, Manuel, were stopped and detained last week while on their way to an early morning work appointment. Kira Gagarin, Manuel’s attorney, asked that the couple’s full names not be published out of fear for their safety while they apply for asylum.
Gladise said she told agents she was pregnant and worried about her children at home. She said the agents let her go after she let them into their home to see her children — but kept Manuel in custody.
Staring at her living room floor Thursday, she recalled how several “big, tall” immigration officers had been standing in the same spot a week earlier.
“They saw my kids,” she said in an interview, a friend helping translate. “I’m traumatized. The kids are also traumatized. … They are always asking me if they (ICE) are going to come. And they are scared. They can’t even go outside.”
The couple, married for almost 18 years, has lived in Maine since 2019 after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico, Gladise said. Gagarin said the family was allowed into the country for humanitarian reasons.
“They’ve attended all of their hearings,” Gagarin said, “and they’ve gone to all of their required check-ins.”
‘YOU WAIT YEARS’
Several asylum seekers arrested last week by ICE have had long waits for hearings in immigration court, including Manuel, who has a hearing scheduled for 2028.
By the end of 2025, there were 3.3 million cases pending in immigration court, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data collection nonprofit affiliated with Syracuse University. That included almost 2.3 million people waiting for asylum hearings, according to TRAC.
According to reporting from NPR, Trump fired roughly 100 immigration judges last year, exacerbating the backlog.
“The Trump administration is trying to eviscerate the whole process and, in effect, deny individuals the opportunity to get any meaningful hearing on their asylum claim, and to effectively destroy the entire asylum system,” said Lucas Guttentag, a professor and immigration expert at Stanford Law School.
Yanick Joao Carneiro, who was arrested during a scheduled check-in on Jan. 20, has been waiting on a hearing scheduled for November 2027.
In petitions that Carneiro’s attorneys filed in Maine and Massachusetts, requesting that he get a bond hearing, they say he has not been convicted of any crimes meriting detention. Records filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maine did not report that he has any criminal history.
Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts, where Carneiro was transferred, never responded to his petition there. On Friday, a judge ordered that the DOJ give him a bond hearing within seven days.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that she believes Carneiro entered the country illegally and was released “unvetted” by the Biden administration. McLaughlin said he “will receive full due process.”
“Anyone who claims asylum at a port of entry is subject to mandatory detention while the government investigates their claims,” McLaughlin stated. “If their claims are found to be valid, they will be granted relief. If they are found to not be valid, they are swiftly removed.”
DHS did not respond to specific requests about other asylum seekers mentioned in this story.
Makuiza has been waiting for a decision on her asylum claim since a final hearing last summer. Her son said she had to wait almost a decade for that court date.
“These immigration cases, they take a long time,” Diabanza-Makuiza said earlier in the week. “You wait years for it — and we waited years for it.”
As Diabanza-Makuiza waited for his mother to arrive home Friday night, he said the family plans to make sure she is fed well and surrounded by community. Diabanza-Makuiza said he was just about to send money to the prison where his mother was being moved to pay for food, when Hanly told his father that his mother was coming home.
“I want whoever sees this to have some hope,” he said. “To keep praying, to not give up on their family members who have been taken by ICE.”
