Comment on Maine advocates still concerned over fate of immigrant families

Advocates in Maine remain concerned about U.S. immigration policy even after an executive order by President Donald Trump on Wednesday backtracked a policy of separating children from their families at the Mexico border. The order from the president follows a public outcry over his administration’s treatment of immigrant children, and it promised to “maintain family unity.” But it also allows for the construction of detention facilities, if necessary, to hold families as they go through immigration proceedings, and seeks to override a law limiting the number of days children can stay in detention facilities. “The administration created the problem of separating families, and now they’ve created a different problem of detaining families indefinitely,” said Julia Brown, an advocacy and outreach attorney for the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project in Portland.