By Morgan Womack
Portland Press Herald
PORTLAND, Maine — Gratien Milandou-Wamba thought he’d done everything right.
The 32-year-old said he fled from the Republic of the Congo after being tortured and threatened in prison over his connection to an opposition party. So, he decided to leave behind his home in Brazzaville, his family and his career as a firefighter.
“I was not living like a normal person,” Milandou-Wamba said. “I was hiding myself.”
He arrived in the United States in May 2023, got a tourist visa and started to apply for asylum. A few months later, he received a work permit and Social Security number.
So, Milandou-Wamba said he was frightened and confused when he was driving to work as a corrections officer at the Cumberland County Jail on the morning of April 19 and saw an unmarked police vehicle suddenly light up. He was pulled over and two officers in civilian clothing handcuffed him and put him in the back of their vehicle.
He was still wearing his uniform — pleated khaki slacks and a tie — when he was brought to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Scarborough.
Nearly two months have passed and Milandou-Wamba said in a phone interview Tuesday from the Strafford County Jail in New Hampshire that he still doesn’t understand what he did wrong — he believes he’s legally allowed to work in the U.S. and is waiting for the government’s response to his asylum application.
“What is being illegal?” Milandou-Wamba asked.
He said no one from ICE has responded to his questions. The officers he met when he was arrested said he had overstayed his visa, but he said he thought his work permit would allow him to remain in the United States until his asylum process was complete.
A spokesperson from ICE has not responded to questions about why Milandou-Wamba was detained.
Job on the line
Milandou-Wamba said he started working as a corrections officer in Cumberland County in August 2024. The job wasn’t easy, he said, but he became fully certified by the criminal justice academy in March 2025.
After he was arrested, he said he lost his job.
The Cumberland County human resources department called him at the New Hampshire jail and sent a letter to his family’s home in Portland, Milandou-Wamba said, notifying him that he was fired for abandoning his post.
Records from the Maine Public Employee Retirement System, which tracks public employees in the state, show Milandou-Wamba was receiving benefits from Aug. 5, 2024, until May 31, but it’s not clear exactly when he was fired.
County Manager Jim Gailey would not respond Tuesday to several questions, including how the county learned about Milandou-Wamba’s arrest and the circumstances of his firing. Sheriff Kevin Joyce said he doesn’t know anything about the charges his former employee may be facing or why he was arrested, and declined to comment on his termination.
Milandou-Wamba’s arrest comes at a time when the county has seen an increase in immigrants applying to work for the jail. Joyce said in an interview earlier this month that the county had hired more than 20 immigrants over the past year to work as corrections officers.
He said this became possible because prospective jail employees are no longer required to take English reading and writing comprehension tests. That made it easier for people who speak English as a second language to be certified by the Maine Criminal Justice Academy and apply to work in facilities like the jail, Joyce said.
Though the county must confirm that its employees are legally authorized to work in the United States, Joyce said it does not keep tabs on immigration statuses.
The increase in applicants has helped the jail fill some of its 70-plus vacancies. Not every immigrant hired since the academy’s requirements changed is still working at the jail, officials said.
Ongoing legal battles
Milandou-Wamba and his attorneys have been compiling paperwork to contest his detention and defend his request for asylum.
One of his lawyers, Wade McCall, said Milandou-Wamba is disappointed that his earliest hearing in the asylum case isn’t until October. He said Milandou-Wamba’s story “conforms very heavily” with others who have fled torture and persecution in the Republic of the Congo.
“His visa was expired,” McCall said. “That’s the issue with most people detained these days, that’s how they end up in detention.”
McCall said that expired visa must be what caught the eye of immigration authorities, though Milandou-Wamba said the ICE officers he spoke to in Scarborough also mentioned his attempt to purchase a gun in September 2024.
Milandou-Wamba said he applied to buy a firearm for his personal protection at home, but when the application bounced because of his immigration status, he rescinded it.
He said he doesn’t understand why that would be held against him; he never actually touched a gun, he said, and has no criminal record in Maine .
McCall said Milandou-Wamba is still hopeful that his request for asylum will be granted.
“He had that job. He had an apartment,” McCall said. “He had cultivated very strong relationships with people. ... He was just trying to grow a new life here, and he was having progress with that.”
Missing his community
Milandou-Wamba said he hasn’t been eating or sleeping well in jail, and wishes he could participate in activities like Bible study. Several people wrote letters to the court asking that Milandou-Wamba be released so he can return to his church, to Maine’s Congolese community and to his cousin and brother-in-law.
Tyler Brinkmann, Milandou-Wamba’s close friend and landlord in Falmouth, said he hopes to raise awareness about Milandou-Wamba’s situation because he feels powerless in the legal battle. He said he and Milandou-Wamba speak on the phone twice a week, and he often texts from the jail-approved tablets.
Rep. Chellie Pingree, D- 1st District, has said her office is tracking immigration arrests throughout the state. Her staff said Monday that they were still trying to learn more about the officer’s detention, but that Pingree was concerned by a surge in immigration arrests and their impacts to the workforce.
“The Trump administration has made it abundantly clear that it will stop at nothing to meet its insane deportation goals — even if it means sweeping up immigrants who have taken every step required to live and work here and continue to follow the law,” Pingree said in a written statement provided by her office. “Instead of going after the most dangerous people, ICE has chosen instead to terrorize our communities and sow fear among law-abiding residents who are simply trying to live, work, and care for their families.”
About 100 people gathered at a Cumberland County commissioners meeting on Monday night to protest the jail’s agreement with the federal government that nets the facility $150 per day for each federal inmate it holds for the U.S. Marshals Service and ICE.
Brendan McQuade, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of Southern Maine, mentioned Milandou-Wamba’s case during the public comment period.
“Cumberland County tried to hire immigrants,” McQuade said, “and ICE caged them.”
© 2025 the Portland Press Herald (Portland, Maine).
Visit www.pressherald.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.