FRIENDSHIP, Maine — A federal judge has ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to relocate a Friendship man who ICE agents arrested Saturday.

Dhavalkumar Kalidas Patel was seized by four ICE agents at Wallace’s Market, which Patel and his wife operate on Harbor Road in Friendship.

His wife said the agents did not say why he was being taken away in handcuffs.

Attorney Audrey Richardson of Greater Boston Legal Services filed a motion for habeas corpus, meaning he is to be brought to a court in person.

U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts issued an emergency order hours after Patel was seized that prohibits him from being moved elsewhere.

“To provide a fair opportunity for the judge who will be randomly assigned to this case to review the merits of the petition and to rule on any contested issues of jurisdiction, unless otherwise ordered by the assigned judge, respondents will not remove the petitioner from the jurisdiction of the United States or transfer petitioner to a judicial district outside that of Massachusetts for a period of at least 72 hours from the time this Order is docketed,” Talwani wrote.

Patel is being held at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The petition filed by the attorney representing Patel argues that he is being held unlawfully.

No further hearing dates have been scheduled, but the federal government has until July 6 to file a response.

Richardson issued a statement on the arrest.

“This is another example of ICE illegally and illegitimately taking someone who is working hard to support their family,” she said, including a child born in the United States. “The family is a critical part of the fabric of a small community.”

The Patels have operated the store since 2024. The attorney said ICE agents initially did not even identify themselves. They did not say where he was being taken but he was allowed to make a call when they stopped in Scarborough.

Rob Sample, a customer of the store, said he could not understand why such an action was taken.

“We appreciate them,” he said of the Patel family, adding that they work hard to provide a community service by operating the store.

Knox County Sheriff Patrick Polky said ICE notified his department after its action. He noted the agency is not required to notify the department.

Patel is a native of India.

This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.

Maine’s blueberry barrens, which have been part of the state’s iconic scenery since before Europeans first arrived, are not as permanent as some might think.

Many are not just used for growing the state’s signature wild fruit, but also are beloved spots for hiking, hunting and picnicking, and provide important habitat and food for many species of animals and birds. The barrens are also testament to an ancient, and continuing, interplay of human stewardship and the unique features of the land.

But the fate of these Maine landscapes is increasingly uncertain, and preserving them for future generations is not so simple, according to land stewards and nonprofit groups that help protect parcels throughout the midcoast from being developed.

More than a thousand acres of blueberry land are currently on the market or have been sold recently. Larger blueberry producers are withdrawing from the region in the face of low prices and the intensifying effects of climate change, which has made weather patterns more erratic, sometimes whipsawing between early frosts, soggy conditions and drought in a single growing season.

Adding to the uncertainty is the fact that some large tracts of blueberry land that were for sale have recently been withdrawn from the market. Some of this land appears to be being cultivated for berries again this year, though it’s unclear whether it will be put back up for sale after the harvest.

“With what’s happening with our blueberry land, we’re seeing how vulnerable we are when private corporations have been holding or stewarding something that is a community asset and a part of the community’s local food system,” said Alivia Moore, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation and co-director of Niweskok, a Wabanaki-led nonprofit focused on reconnecting Wabanaki people with the land and their cultural food systems. The group has a farm and education center in Swanville.

The midcoast blueberry parcels that are for sale include several plots owned by Wyman’s, including 122 acres on Clarry Hill in Union priced at $499,000 and 40 acres in Penobscot being sold for $299,000. It also includes a 247-acre parcel known as Patterson Hill in Belfast being sold for $1.8 million by a member of the family that operates Allen’s Wild Maine Blueberries.

Worried that this land will be lost to development, a couple of local efforts have sprung up in recent months to try to protect some blueberry land. A group of women in Searsport is gaining traction in their effort to raise $750,000 to save more than 150 acres of land being sold by Wyman’s.

And on June 15, Northport voters overwhelmingly approved a moratorium on new RV parks, “glampgrounds” and event centers after a Massachusetts couple bought over 100 acres, much of it in blueberry barrens, with plans to turn the parcel into an RV park with up to 80 sites and geodesic domes.

Wyman’s did not respond to requests for comment.

In neighboring Hancock County, a would-be developer faced strong local opposition last year to converting a Blue Hill blueberry barren into house lots. He ended up selling the 38-acre property, which used to be owned by blueberry businessman Kermit Allen, to the project’s opponents.

Small-scale blueberry producers have also stepped in in some cases to buy fields or contract with land trusts to manage blueberry fields they already steward. But despite public concern, and the unusually large amount of blueberry land currently at stake, there is no large-scale coordinated effort to protect the midcoast’s blueberry barrens from being developed into new uses.

When it comes to an emblem of local culture, “blueberries are second only to lobsters,” said Ian Stewart, the executive director of Coastal Mountains Land Trust, which is headquartered in Camden.

But “it’s hard to react” to so much blueberry land being on the market at the same time, he said.

It’s not that people don’t care, Stewart said. His group, which manages large blueberry barrens at its Beech Hill Preserve in Rockport, hears frequently from people who are worried that this land will be lost to development.

Many local land trusts already have some blueberry land in their portfolios but adding more presents real challenges, he said. The land needs to be managed in perpetuity in order to keep it from reverting back to forest, and finding people to take that on isn’t easy.

When the land trust protects a block of forest, it takes a “fairly hands-off approach,” Stewart said. It may just leave the forest alone, or manage invasive species, or build a trail.

“Blueberry land is quite the opposite,” he said. It requires mowing and bushogging in perpetuity, otherwise it will revert to scrub and then forest.

Coastal Mountains has a reserve account for maintaining its blueberry land at Beech Hill. Stewart estimates that it costs $25,000 to $35,000 per year in staff time and other costs to manage the land trust’s blueberry land.

It’s with these costs in mind that the land trust evaluates opportunities to conserve more blueberry land.

“We’re aware that it is a real investment, so we don’t take it on lightly,” Stewart said.

“Conservation isn’t the tool that keeps [this land] blueberries,” said Linnea Patterson, land conservation manager at Georges River Land Trust, which is headquartered in Rockland. “Managing is what keeps it blueberries. And a lot of land trusts aren’t equipped to become a commercial-scale blueberry grower or steward.”

The fact that many of the parcels currently for sale cost hundreds of thousands of dollars makes conserving some of the tracts on the market even more challenging, she said.

Still, she says that blueberry barrens have a lot of qualities that make them good candidates for conservation such as scenic views, habitat, and potential for public access.

Georges River Land Trust currently works with blueberry growers at two of its preserves and the land trust is eager to help find a solution to protecting the region’s blueberry landscapes, Patterson said.

“It’s a very emotional thing to think about losing native Maine blueberry fields,” she said.

Moore, of Niweskok, said the current moment presents “an important, sudden, fragile opportunity.”

Wabanaki people are a big part of the reason we have so many blueberry barrens in Maine, she points out. “Yes, it’s the soils, it’s the topography, it’s the geology. It’s also the millenia of relationship and stewardship of Wabanaki people.”

That relationship, which she characterized as “caretaking for collective abundance,” provides a way forward that could help protect land and also restore communities’ stewardship of the land.

This could include land trusts, farming coops and other grassroots efforts to protect and care for the land, she said.

“I think there’s a really important opportunity with so much land [listed] for sale right now where we can reorient and shift away from private land holding of something that really needs to be part of stabilizing our local food system and putting it back into local community control,” Moore said.

One grassroots effort, The Wild Blueberry Collective, has been organizing to protect a tract of land that Wyman’s is selling in Searsport. They have approached land trusts but found the groups were able to offer resources, but not to take on the effort to buy the land.

“It feels like the way to make this happen is through grassroots organizing,” she said.

Instead of putting the land directly on the market, Wyman’s has offered the group a purchase and sale agreement if they can raise the funds by October. To date, the group has raised $100,000 in grants and $35,000 from donors and small fundraisers. They also have an agreement with an entity that will loan them half of the money if they can come up with the first half, said Gloria Pearse, though she declined to provide more specifics about the agreement.

While the collective is currently focused on fundraising to protect the parcel in Searsport, they would not be opposed to working to protect other blueberry landscapes, Pearse said.

“Land is being developed and here’s our opportunity to protect the reason why we like where we live,” she said. “This is the time to save that land.”

FREEPORT — Flo Edwards and Alexus Bond have been shucking oysters under a tent and serving them to mollusk enthusiasts from all over the country for three days. 

Their bounty is helping the 5th annual Maine Oyster Festival reach a new record for oyster sales, which is predicted to be well over last year’s 40,000. 

The event started in 2021, when a group of oyster farmers approached Visit Freeport to ask about a statewide oyster festival, lead planner Margaret Hoffman said.

“They really desired to have a festival in Maine that was free and open to the public, low cost, broke down barriers, because people think oysters are this kind of exclusive thing that you can only eat in fancy restaurants,” Hoffman said. The farmers also wanted an event that welcomed farmers from anywhere in Maine.

Dozens of restaurants, artists and marine specialists take over the parking lot behind the iconic L.L. Bean flagship store in Freeport. At any given time during the three-day event, 20 of these tents represented oyster farms.

“The best office I’ve ever worked in is out on the water during the daytime,” Edwards — whose main gig is dentistry — said. She and Bond, a logistician, started their business, Indigo Oyster Co., three years ago.

Indigo is a two-woman job, the lifelong friends said. They had spent years bonding over their shared love of oysters until one day they asked each other: “Should we try this?” Then, they started their farm in Yarmouth.

“Usually women who look like us are in the factories where they’re just shucking or canning, like not taking part in the ownership,” Bond said. 

They chose the name “Indigo” because it honors Bond’s Asian heritage and Edwards’s African heritage. Taking the leap to launch a life on the water meant an opportunity to highlight women and people of color — two underrepresented populations in oyster farming, Bond said.

This was their first year at the festival, and it went well. Some visitors even saved their last oyster ticket to return to the booth, labelling Indigo oysters as their favorite of the weekend.

Hoffman said turnout this year has been great thanks to the weather and the offerings, with some farms selling out on the second day of the festival. She met one woman who said she had driven from Arizona just for the event.

Freeport welcomed farmers and educators from as far south as Eliot, and as far north as Brooksville, all eager to teach visitors about the world of oyster farming.

Most oyster farmers in Maine use a top culture method, where oysters are harvested in a cage at the surface of the water. Top culture harvesting is relatively fast, and produces small oysters, said John Clapp, the owner of Mimi’s Oysters. 

“We’re really focused on dive harvesting and working on our bottom sites,” Clapp said. They are one of a few farms in the state that uses both top and bottom culture.

All of Mimi’s oysters spend an entire season on the surface, but the largest get planted directly on the bottom where they grow for another two years. Bottom culture makes for a bigger oyster and a more complex flavor palate, Clapp said. 

“Despite the extra time that it takes to get there, we feel that the, you know, the more time you spend with the oyster, the better product that you’re getting in the end,” he said.

Clapp and his team came to the festival with 4,000 oysters. After selling 2,400 on Saturday, the crew was confident they’d sell out of their remaining 1,600 Sunday.

Between sampling dozens of oysters, browsing the goods for sale and listening to live music, visitors had the opportunity to watch the festival’s culminating event on Sunday; an oyster shucking competition.

No two oysters are the same, and no one knows that better than the professional shuckers who competed this year.

Spectators gathered as Kelly Punch, Firat Kocan and defending champion Chad Michael Egeland carefully slid their shucking knives between each oyster shell. Any leftover grit or cracks in the shell resulted in a penalty.

Egeland finished first, followed by Kocan and Punch. After a few minutes of inspection, judges wrote down final scores on the lid of a paper takeout box, crowning Egeland winner for the second year in a row.

The oysters were slightly dry and gave the competitors some trouble this year, Egeland — who is also the raw bar sous chef at Portland’s Scales — said. But, he couldn’t be happier with his win.