MAINE MONITOR • April 19, 2025
Agricultural farmers, as well as wreath factories, restaurants, hotels, fisheries, and other Maine businesses have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities. As federal immigration officials ratchet up surveillance, advocates say many immigrants — even those who are documented — fear deportation, with more of them choosing to lay low, avoiding school or work. The Trump administration is considering eliminating, scaling back, or revoking some visas that employers have relied on to augment their work teams for decades. Trump 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. The authors of Project 2025 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.