Laura Anderson was driving home on Monday when her fiancé called.

Lucas Segóbia and his long-time friend, Marcos Henrique, were on their way to a worksite outside Portland — Segóbia was coming back from a DJ show in New Jersey — when a Maine state trooper stopped them near a toll plaza because the car’s license plate was not in the center of the car, Anderson said.

By the time she arrived, so had Border Patrol.

“I felt so powerless in that situation,” Anderson said Friday, standing on the wide steps of Portland City Hall before dozens of supporters who carried signs criticizing recent immigration arrests.

“I am sad and angry, because this shouldn’t happen to anyone,” Anderson told them.

President Donald Trump has promised mass deportations and, under his administration, immigration officers have arrested a broad range of people, including suspected El Salvadoran gang members and international college students who have participated in campus protests.

In Maine, border officials have boasted of record-high arrests. By May, the agency said it had detained more people in the state this year than in all of 2024.

While the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly accused some law enforcement agencies of not cooperating with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement — including the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and Portland Police Department — some immigration advocates fear Maine police are working with ICE more than necessary. Lawmakers are considering legislation to prohibit police agencies in the state from partnering with ICE.

Anderson said she has spent the week calling Border Patrol, ICE and jails all over New England in an effort to keep up with Segóbia and Henrique’s whereabouts.

Both men are from Brazil, and their families insist they should be allowed to stay in the U.S. Segóbia’s mother, who lives in Florida, was sponsoring him via an I-30 petition for an alien relative, according to his stepfather, Marco Silva.

“He wasn’t hiding,” Silva said Friday. Silva said he was on a work trip in Louisiana when he learned Segóbia was taken, and drove more than 40 hours to be in Maine Friday.

A spokesperson for Border Patrol said they were called to help verify the men’s identities, and that one had overstayed their B2 visa “and neither had legal status in the United States.”

“Both individuals were taken into the custody and turned over to ICE/ERO for removal,” spokesperson Ryan Bissette wrote in an email. “Those that choose to break the law will be apprehended and will face consequences including but not limited to jail time and/or removal from the United States.”

When asked where the men were transferred, Bissette referred a reporter to ICE, which did not respond to requests for information.

Maine State Police spokesperson Shannon Moss did not respond Friday to questions about the traffic stop. In April, she said that state police assist all law enforcement officers, including federal agencies, with investigating criminal activity.

Henrique and Segóbia have known each other since attending college together in Brazil, Anderson said.

Henrique lives in Massachusetts and his wife, Ana Luiz, is seven months pregnant with their child. Luiz said in a written statement that Henrique didn’t have a driver’s license with him Monday night and had recently lost his passport.

“Only he and I live here,” she said. “We have no family, and right now I’m alone, pregnant with very high blood pressure, suffering without my husband’s presence!”

Anderson said she was able to track Segóbia and Henrique to the York County Jail because her fiancé was sharing his location on his phone. Then, she says, she didn’t hear from him for another day.

Eventually she learned he was at Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset, following a tip she said she got from a Border Patrol agent in Canada. But by Friday morning, he was no longer there.

“I have no idea where he is,” she told reporters outside City Hall.

Anderson and Segóbia have been together for about a year. They live together in Searsport with their dog, Althea.

She said they met through their shared love for the arts and skilled trades. Segóbia is a DJ and carpenter, regularly playing shows in a traveling collective, and she makes jewelry from semiprecious stones and is a welder.

She said they were planning a wedding at her family’s home in central Maine.

“He is an essential part of my life and my future,” she said.

Silva said he immigrated to the United States in 1983. It was a difficult process then, Silva said, but he feels it’s been harder for Segóbia.

“There’s a fear in the immigrant community,” he said. “Everybody’s afraid.”

IMMIGRATION DETENTIONS

Anderson, Silva, and several friends and family say they want to see the men released. Anderson said she found Segóbia a lawyer who she hopes will challenge the circumstances of his detention. They had already raised more than $10,400 for legal costs on Gofundme as of Friday afternoon.

She feels the men’s due process rights have been violated as they’ve been shuffled between jails that hold ICE and border patrol detainees.

At least two other ICE detainees in Maine have challenged the legality of their detention in the last month.

One man was at the Cumberland County Jail in Portland for eight months without answers from ICE, according to a petition the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine filed last week. He was moved to a jail in Massachusetts four days later, but was returned to the Portland jail soon afterward, the ACLU said.

Getting access to Segóbia has been like pulling teeth, Anderson said, and no one has been able to tell her what the men were doing wrong and what will happen to them.

James Bailey, the administrator for Two Bridges Regional Jail, said Friday that they hold federal inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service on a short-term basis. That includes up to 25 ICE detainees, but the contract is not specific to immigration arrests.

Bailey said the jail also has a memorandum of understanding with Border Patrol to hold more people when space is available on a case-by-case basis.

York County Sheriff William King, said both men were briefly at the county jail in Alfred but left early Tuesday morning. King said they’re not holding anyone for Border Patrol now, but do have several people at the jail under on local chargers with ICE detainers.

Staff Writer Morgan Womack contributed to this report.