Maine
Maine businesses worry as immigration crackdown ramps up
Tractors stand at the ready along rolling wild blueberry barrens Downeast, where fields of naked stems offer no hint of the glorious techno-color display to come. By late spring, roughly 47,000 acres across Washington and Hancock counties will be carpeted in white blossoms before bursting into tiny blueberries.
But new federal immigration policies and ramped-up deportations have businesses across the state — especially in rural, agricultural communities — concerned about migrant workers showing up to rake those fields — out in plain sight.
“Our producers are very careful about vetting their workforce to ensure that they all have the necessary and proper documentation if they are coming from outside of the U.S.,” said Eric Venturini, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission. “But I am concerned about a decrease in the agricultural workforce due to shifting immigration policies that could make it more challenging for farmers to get their crops.”
Wild blueberry farms aren’t the only businesses statewide that could be facing a labor shortage, compounded by escalating threats of deportation and revoked visas. Agricultural farmers of all types, as well as wreath factories, restaurants, hotels, fisheries, and other businesses have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities.
According to the most recent 5-year estimate reported in the American Community Survey, Maine’s foreign-born population is about 53,600. Among those aged 16 and over, 63 percent are in the workforce, or about 31,500 workers, according to Jessica Picard, communications director for the State of Maine Department of Labor.
Among those who employ foreign-born workers is the group of Whitney Family Companies, which owns and operates Whitney Wreath, Whitney’s Tri-Town Marina, Machias Glassworks, and Downeast Packaging Solutions, all located in Machias. Owner and CEO David Whitney employs an undisclosed number of seasonal migrant workers at his companies, workers he depends on to supplement his local workforce.
Whitney said he fully supports the Trump administration’s tightened immigration policies. In 2011 Whitney’s company became the first in the state to sign on to the federal IMAGE program, a voluntary partnership initiative between the federal government and private sector employers that strengthens hiring practices and monitoring of migrant worker documentation through an electronic verification system, regular audits, and payroll reviews.
“We’re under tremendous scrutiny, which is all the more reason that I continue to be motivated to follow the letter of the law. Always have,” Whitney said. “I sleep very well at night.”
But as federal immigration officials ratchet up surveillance around the nation, advocates say many immigrants — even those who are documented — fear deportation, with more of them choosing to lay low, avoiding school or work.
Along the shores of Englishmen’s Bay, sea spray wafts over the wild blueberry fields of Welch Farm in Roque Bluffs, owned and operated for more than a century by Lisa Hanscom’s family.
Everyone pitches in on this small but productive farm, including Hanscom’s 77-year-old father. But come harvest time, they still rely on a handful of migrant workers to help get the tender berries raked and crated before they rot in the field.
So far this season, Hanscom hasn’t heard from the two Mi’kmaq migrant friends from Canada and the young Guatemalan man who she’s counted on in past years.
“The young man was legal, working on his citizenship and everything. But I don’t know what that means for me this year, whether he’s even going to be around,” Hanscom said.
Hanscom chairs the volunteer Wild Blueberry Commission in addition to running the farm and her full-time job as director of the Washington County Emergency Management Agency. She knows the blueberry business and is used to dealing with unexpected crises. But Hanscom said it’s hard for farmers to come up with contingency plans to deal with such a rapidly evolving immigration landscape.
Nationwide arrests and detentions are up sharply since Trump took office, and worries are mounting among seasonal employers in Maine. In late March, the detention of a teenager on his way to work in Lewiston rattled the local community; he was reportedly taken to New York City, more than 300 miles away from his mother and three younger siblings, according to the Bangor Daily News. His family was told by a Border Patrol agent that he would likely be deported to El Salvador, according to Maine Public.
In early April, the Wells Police Department in southern Maine entered into a formal agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allowing the police department to enforce certain aspects of federal immigration law. While ICE has similar agreements in place with other municipalities around the country, this is the first of its kind in Maine.
The Internal Revenue Department also struck a deal with federal immigration authorities to share the sensitive data of migrants who pay federal taxes under formerly shielded tax ID numbers. The exposure could make migrants reluctant to file taxes or share documentation with employers.
During an online presentation in February, Patrick Woodcock, the executive director of the Maine Chamber of Commerce, said that employers need to be aware of the potential ramifications on Maine’s workforce.
“Regardless of the merits of the polic[ies], we really do want to ensure that employers understand how to be in compliance,” Woodcock said. “There may be employees that were authorized to work that may be affected by changes and may not be authorized to work now or in the coming months.”
The Trump administration has signaled that it is considering eliminating, scaling back, or revoking some visas that employers have relied on to augment their work teams for decades.
The Monitor reached out to more than a dozen business owners and managers to gauge concerns. Half of those responded, with only one business expressing concern about losing the visa program it uses to supplement its summer staff of about 30.
Victor Trafford, who owns the Fishermen’s Wharf Inn and Restaurant in Lubec, said the business typically employs 4-6 young women, mostly from Eastern Europe, each summer through the J-1 visa Exchange Student Worker Program.
“I think we’re going to be okay. But laws can change — can change without notice,” Trafford said.
The Trump administration has also revoked the visas of hundreds of international students and detained roughly a dozen others from college campuses across the US, often without any warning or recourse for appeals, according to a recent report by the BBC.
A J-1 visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows students to study, work, or conduct research in the United States for three months or longer, depending on the visa. It’s one of roughly 200 types of U.S. non-immigrant and immigrant visas that grant foreign nationals permission to stay in the country for residence, study, or work. Another category is the H-1B visa program, which allows highly educated foreign professionals to work in “specialty occupations.”
But the visas that most impact farmers seeking to boost their local workforce are H-2A agricultural visas, which allow foreign workers to come to the U.S. to perform seasonal agricultural labor. Employers in the service industry, meanwhile, often rely on H-2B visas, which allow workers to temporarily come to the U.S. to perform non-agricultural services or labor, such as hotel and restaurant work.
Last year in Maine, 41 agricultural companies each received anywhere between one and 140 H-2A visa approvals. Cherryfield Foods, Inc., a grower and producer of wild blueberries located in Cherryfield and Machias, received the most agricultural visas of any business in the state, a total of 140 H-2A visas.
A 2015 Maine Department of Labor 2015 survey, the most recent report available from the Department, found that 56 percent of migrant farm workers were from Mexico, with others from Haiti, Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Philippines. A 2019 University Maine report found that Maine’s migrant workers also come from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Guatemala and from elsewhere in the United States.
Ricker Hill Orchards in Turner was granted 33 agricultural visas in 2024. The tenth-generation small farming business has survived 200 years of challenges, including a slumping local workforce that began during WWII.
Although it’s bureaucratically burdensome and costly — north of $80,000 some seasons — company president Harry Ricker and his wife Nancy, who is the CFO, said H-2A visas have helped them hang on to the farm, allowing them to bring in dozens of hard-working apple pickers each harvest season, mostly from Jamaica.
“There are a lot less local people that want to do it, so we have to have this program,” Ricker said. “Without it, we’ll just be out of the industry. We go away.”
Since businesses foot the bill for all visa fees, travel, and lodging, Ricker sees no reason for the administration to tamper with the H-2A visa program.
Some critics, however, including authors of the controversial Project 2025, are pushing the Trump administration to cap and then phase out the program because they say it squeezes American workers out of the market. Nationally, DOL certified over 378,000 temporary H-2A jobs in FY 2023 — more than six times the number certified in 2006.
But H-2A visa advocates point to data that show persistent workforce shortages and the federal laws that tightly regulate migrant worker pay to make sure it doesn’t undercut the local market.
Employers must recruit U.S. workers, including posting jobs on the US Department of Labor’s seasonal jobs website, and give preference to U.S. workers over H-2A workers. The employer also must pay all workers at the same federally mandated Adverse Effect Wage Rates (AEWRs), which in Maine is $18.83 per hour, compared to the state’s current minimum wage of $14.65 per hour.
Non-agricultural workers also nervous
The authors of Project 2025 also have the H-2B non-agricultural temporary visa program in their sights, calling for the elimination of the visas that a host of industries depend on, from tourism and hospitality to restaurants and services at some national parks.
The H-2B program is capped at 66,000 each year for the entire country, with an additional number of visas typically added to the cap each year, including an extra 64,716 for 2025 announced earlier this month.
Although Trump recently signaled support for businesses that rely on H-2B temporary workers, the release of the supplemental visas was delayed this year. According to a recent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services press release, only employers who will “suffer irreparable harm,” will be approved for additional H-2B workers, and must attest to that harm in writing on a new form as part of their petition for the workers.
There are never enough visas allotted to meet demand, requiring employers to compete in a lottery system, according to Kathryn Ference, director of Workforce Development for the Maine Tourism Association.
“The programs are incredibly important to the [tourism] industry in Maine and making sure that we have what we need to make this industry run, which brings so much economic value to the state, adding $16.3 billion to the Maine economy in 2023, [is very important.]” Ference said.
Downeast’s largest tourism draw, Acadia National Park, doesn’t use any visa-permitted workers at the park. The seasonal National Park Service jobs all have U.S. Citizenship as a condition of employment, according to Perrin Doniger, vice president of communications and marketing for the Friends of Acadia.
But in neighboring Bar Harbor, 99 lodging facilities and 66 restaurants rely heavily on H-2B visas, including five of the six Witham Family Hotels, said Managing Director Jeremy Dougherty .
According to Dougherty, the Witham chain employs roughly 500 people, with about 200 at the Bar Harbor Inn alone, including about 82 foreign nationals working on temporary H-2B visas. Dougherty said many are from Jamaica, as well as El Salvador, Haiti, and other countries. He said they are some of his best workers and that some have returned for 15 summers — if they are lucky enough to secure a visa lottery slot.
Dougherty said the visa process is arduous for both the company’s human resource department and for the migrant workers, requiring months of applications, interviews, waiting, and then travel and housing arrangements before they even get to their first day on the job. This year, he said, some of the migrants are a little nervous, and not just about the possibility of being confronted by ICE agents.
“Some of our staff have asked how to best handle it if somebody were to say something that would maybe be inappropriate,” Dougherty said. “In the last few years, people are a little more emboldened to say things to people of color than they used to, and it just puts us more on alert, a little more protective, you know, like protective parents.”
Costs are up. It’s all around.
Nationally, inflation charted 2.7% in November, according to the latest available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure was slightly higher in the northeast region, where prices rose about 3.1% in November compared to the same month last year.
The latest inflation numbers were better than some had expected, but many Americans say they still feel the pinch of high prices.
James Myall, an analyst with the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, said that disconnect between “high-level” economic data and consumer sentiment is likely driven by the price of essentials, which carry more weight than other expenses.
“Probably, the things that people are feeling the most are those costs that feel unavoidable: rent, groceries,” Myall said.
Myall noted that the rate of price increases has slowed since its peak during the COVID-19 pandemic, from about 2021 to 2023, but wage growth also appears to be losing steam, which can further weaken Mainers’ spending power in the face of rising prices.
All told, Myall said the economy appears to be on a better trajectory than he expected in early 2025. But Trump administration policies like tariffs and mass deportations, which could shrink the labor pool, still leave things on shaky ground.
“I feel like we’ve gone from a generally strong and growing economy, especially for workers, (a year ago) to one that’s like plateauing and maybe teetering on the edge a little bit,” Myall said.
In preparation for the new year, we reviewed the cost of essentials to see how prices changed in 2025, and where things stand at the beginning of 2026.
Groceries
In January 2025, the average price for a gallon of 2% milk was $4.91, a pound of 80/20 ground beef was $5.70, and a dozen large, brown eggs cost $5.50. That’s according to data collected by Maine Public, which surveyed four grocers across the state.
On Tuesday, the average price of eggs at Whole Foods, Hannaford, Shaw’s and Walmart locations in Greater Portland was $3.03. That marks a 44.9% decrease — though prices were anomalously high at the beginning of last year, driven up by a surge in avian flu.
For a pound of ground beef, the average price was $6.23, a 9.3% rise. And the average milk price was $4.49 — down 8.6% from January.
Vehicles
Overall, Mainers paid less for new cars and more for used cars in 2025 than in 2024, according to data aggregated by Cox Automotive Group, operator of Kelley Blue Book.
The average sale price for a new car in Maine was $46,289 at the beginning of December 2025, down about 5.1% from $48,756 at the same time in 2024.
Maine’s prices were lower than the national average: $49,913 in December 2024 and $47,042 in December 2025, according to preliminary data shared with the Press Herald. Nationally, the average price for new cars hit an all-time record of $50,080 in September, Kelley Blue Book announced.
But it was a different story for used vehicles. The average sale price for used cars in Maine rose about 7.1%, from $28,813 in December 2024 to $30,868 a year later. Nationally, used car sale prices went from $29,570 to $30,383 — a 2.7% increase, according to the Cox data.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics meanwhile reported a 3.6% increase in used car prices from November 2024 to 2025.
Vehicle retailer CarGurus, which also tracks used car prices nationally, reported a smaller change. Its average price was $27,570 at the beginning of December, up about $112 or 0.4% from a year earlier.
But prices rose more sharply for SUVs and crossovers (1.3%), sedans (2.3%) and pickup trucks (3.7%), according to CarGurus.
Gas
The price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline fell about 10 cents between the beginning of 2025 and the same time in 2026, according to data aggregated by AAA.
On average, a gallon of gas ran about $2.93 on Friday, a 3.3% drop since the same date in 2025, when the price was about $3.03. Premium gas fell from about $4.01 to $3.97 a gallon, or about 1%.
The price of diesel, however, rose about 5% in that time frame, from about $3.79 to $3.98 per gallon.
Electricity
Energy costs continue to grow faster than the pace of inflation. In the northeast, energy prices rose 6.3% year-over-year in November — more than double the overall rate of inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In Maine, rising electricity costs are a key concern for ratepayers and public officials. The state’s electricity costs are largely reliant on the price of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity, and customers also have to pay their utility to deliver that power to their homes and businesses.
For customers of Central Maine Power Co., the state’s largest electrical utility, the average bill will be 12.4% higher this month than it was a year prior.
That translates to a charge of $168.41 this month, compared to $149.76 in January 2025 for households using the typical 550 kilowatt-hours, according to the state Department of Energy Resources and Public Utilities Commission. Exact amounts vary based on customers’ usage.
Heating oil
Roughly half of Mainers rely on oil as their primary home heating source — the most of any state.
Statewide, the average cost for a gallon of heating oil was $3.47 last week, according to the latest available data from the Maine Department of Energy Resources.
That’s about eight cents higher, or 2.4%, than it was at the end of 2024, according to an archive of the state’s website. Back then, the statewide average clocked in at $3.39.
During that same window, a gallon of propane fell from $3.32 to $3.29 and the average cost of kerosene rose from $4.18 to $4.40 per gallon. About 16% of Mainers rely on propane and other tank-stored fuels for heat, according to data from the American Community Survey.
Julie Smith of Readfield is a single parent whose son was in the Principles of Economics class at Brown University during the Dec. 13 shooting that resulted in the deaths of two students.
When classrooms become crime scenes, leadership is no longer measured by intentions or press statements. It is measured by outcomes—and by whether the people responsible for public safety are trusted and empowered to act without hesitation.
On December 13, 2025, a gunman opened fire during a review session for a Principles of Economics class at Brown University. Two students were murdered. Others were wounded. The campus was locked down as parents across the country waited for news no family should ever have to receive.
Maine was not watching from a distance.
My son, a recent graduate of a rural Maine high school, is a freshman at Brown. He was in that Principles of Economics class. He was not in the targeted study group—but students who sat beside him all semester were. These were not abstract victims. They were classmates and friends. Young people who should have been worried about finals, not hiding in lockdown, texting parents to say they were alive.
Despite the fact that the Brown shooting directly affected Maine families, Gov. Janet Mills offered no meaningful public acknowledgment of the tragedy. No recognition that Maine parents were among those grieving, afraid, and desperate for reassurance. In moments like these, acknowledgment matters. Silence is not neutral. It signals whose fear is seen—and whose is ignored. The violence at Brown is a Maine issue: our children are there. Our families are there. The fear, grief, and trauma do not stop at state lines.
The attack and what followed the attack deserve recognition. Law enforcement responded quickly, professionally, and courageously. Campus police, city officers, state police, and federal agents worked together to secure the campus and prevent further loss of life. Officers acted decisively because they understood their mission—and because they knew they would be supported for carrying it out.
That kind of coordination does not happen by accident. It depends on clear authority, mutual trust, and leadership that understands a basic truth: in moments of crisis, law enforcement must be free to work together immediately, without second-guessing.
Even when officers do everything right, the damage does not end when a campus is secured. Students return to classrooms changed—hyper-alert, distracted, scanning exits instead of absorbing ideas. Parents carry a constant, low-level dread, flinching at late-night calls and unknown numbers. Gun violence in schools does not just injure bodies; it fractures trust, rewires behavior, and leaves psychological scars that no statement or reassurance can undo.
That reality makes silence—and policy choices that undermine law enforcement—impossible to ignore.
After the Lewiston massacre in 2023, Governor Mills promised lessons would be learned—that warning signs would be taken seriously, mental-health systems strengthened, and public-safety coordination improved. Those promises mattered because Maine had already paid an unbearable price.
Instead of providing unequivocal support for law enforcement, the governor has taken actions that signal hesitation. Her decision to allow LD 1971 to become law is the latest example. The law introduces technical requirements that complicate inter-agency cooperation by emphasizing legal boundaries and procedural caution. Even when cooperation is technically “allowed,” the message to officers is unmistakable: slow down, worry about liability, protect yourself first.
In emergencies, that hesitation can cost lives. Hesitation by law enforcement in Providence could have cost my son his life. We cannot allow hesitation to become the precedent for Maine policies.
In 2025 alone, hundreds of gun-related incidents have occurred on K–12 and college campuses nationwide. This is not theoretical. This is the environment in which our children are expected to learn—and the reality Maine families carry with them wherever their children go.
My son worked his entire academic life—without wealth or legacy—for the chance to pursue higher education, believing it would allow him to return to Maine rather than leave it behind. Now he is asking a question no 18-year-old should have to ask: why come home to a state whose leaders hesitate to fully stand behind the people responsible for keeping him alive?
Maine’s leaders must decide whose side they are on when crisis strikes: the officers who run toward danger, or the politics that ask them to slow down first.
Parents are done with hollow promises. Students deserve leaders who show their support not with words—but with action.
Cory LaForge always liked a particular restaurant space on Main Street in Bucksport, which recently housed My Buddy’s Place and the Friar’s Brewhouse Tap Room before that.
So much so that, when it became available two months ago, he decided to open his own restaurant there.
Salsa Shack Maine, which opened in early December, is a physical location for the food truck business he’s operated out of Ellsworth and Orland for the last two years. The new spot carrying tacos, burritos and quesadillas adds to a growing restaurant scene in Bucksport and is meant to be a welcoming community space.
“I just loved the feeling of having a smaller restaurant,” LaForge said. “It feels more intimate. This place is designed where you can have a good conversation or talk to your customers, like they’re not just another number on a ticket.”
After growing up in the midcoast, LaForge eventually moved west to work in restaurants at ski areas, where he was exposed to more cultural diversity and new types of food – including tacos.
“It’s like all these different flavors that we’re not exposed to in Maine, so it’s like, I feel like I’ve been living a lie my whole life,” he said. “It was fun to bring all those things that I learned back here.”
When he realized his goal of opening a food truck in 2023 after returning to Maine, LaForge found the trailer he’d purchased on Facebook Marketplace was too small to fit anything but tortillas – and the Salsa Shack was born.
It opened at the Ellsworth Harbor Park in 2023 and operated out of the Orland Community Center in the winter. What started as an experiment took off in popularity and has been busy ever since.
LaForge calls his style “Maine-Mex:” a mix of authentic street tacos in a build-your-own format with different salsas and protein. Speciality salsas include corn and black bean, roasted poblano, pineapple jalapeno and mango Tajin.
The larger kitchen space in the new restaurant has allowed a menu expansion to include quesadillas, burritos and burrito bowls in addition to the tacos, nachos and taco salad bowls sold from the food truck. Regular specials are also on the menu.
More new menu items are likely ahead, according to LaForge, along with a beer and wine license and expanded hours in the spring.
The food truck will live on for now, too; he’s signed up for a few events in the coming months.
Starting Jan. 6, the restaurant will also offer a buy-two-get-one-free “Taco Tuesday” promotion.
“It’s a really fun vibe here, and I feel like everyone finds it very comfortable and easy to come in and order,” LaForge said, comparing the restaurant’s atmosphere to the television show Cheers. “Even if you have to sit down and wait a little while, we always have some fun conversations going on.”
So far, the welcome has been warm locally, he said, both from residents and the other new restaurant owners who help each other out. LaForge’s sole employee, Connor MacLeod, is also a familiar face from MacLeod’s Restaurant, which closed in March after 45 years on Main Street.
When it shut its doors, people in town weren’t sure where they would go, according to LaForge. But four new establishments opened in 2025, offering a range from Thai food to diner offerings.
“It’s kind of fun to see so [many] culinary changes,” he said.
The Salsa Shack is currently open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
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