During a town hall event Monday evening in Portland, Somali-American Maine State Rep. Deqa Dhalac (D-South Portland) claimed that immigrants’ “lives are at stake” in the 2024 election, as part of a rant against former President Donald Trump and defense of immigrants’ contributions to the country and state.
Organized by the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (MIRC), Monday’s “Centering and Restoring The Community: Elections 2024” town hall at the Portland Public Library featured representatives from a number of Maine-based progressive nonprofit organizations.
Speaking alongside Rep. Dhalac on the panel was Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, EqualityMaine Executive Director Gia Drew and Maine ACLU policy counsel Michael Kebede.
After brief introductory remarks encouraging the town hall audience — which included many immigrants — to become active in local and state politics, Rep. Dhalac turned to the topic of the presidential election.
“Another thing that I want to really touch on is what’s at stake as immigrants in this country today,” Dhalac said. “Our lives are at stake, our lives are at stake.”
“You know, we have a candidate who are on the top of the ticket, who is saying immigrants do eat cats and dogs. That is unheard of,” she continued.
Though not mentioning the former president by name, Dhalac appears to be referencing the claim recently made by Trump on the debate stage that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs — the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
“It’s only a fear mongering tactic, and we should not be feared,” Dhalac said of Trump’s rhetoric. “We should not be scared of anybody.”
Dhalac then said she had received death threats as a state legislator because of the way she looks.
“As a state legislator myself, I got death threats just because I look like this. I did not do nothing to anybody,” she said. “The Speaker [Rachel Talbot Ross] gets that, my other representatives of color gets that.”
“It’s just for fear, and we said ‘no,’ because we really represent the State of Maine,” she said. “Look at us — we’re not all white, we are different colors, we are different backgrounds, we are different religious groups.”
“We have to really respect each and every one of us,” she added. “Does not matter what your religious backgrounds are, does not matter your color of your skin. If we respect each other, we really can move forward.”
Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, Dhalac fled her home country in 1990 amid the Somali Civil War, and eventually moved to Maine in the early 2000s.
She was elected to the South Portland City Council in 2018, and made national headlines in 2021 when she became the first Somali-American mayor in the U.S., after a unanimous vote by her fellow South Portland City Councilors.
Dhalac served her first term as a state legislator representing South Portland in the 131st Legislature, and was the sponsor of the controversial bill to establish the so-called “Office of New Americans” with the governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF).
The Mills Administration has said the “Office of New Americans” is aimed at helping the state meet its goal of attracting 75,000 new workers over the next five years by facilitating the incorporation of immigrants into Maine’s workforce.
Rep. Dhalac was widely criticized for remarks she made in a February work session on her bill, when she stated that migrants deserve priority for state services over U.S. veterans, as veterans “have the advantage of speaking the language.”
Speaking at the Monday town hall event, Dhalac argued that immigrants contribute “millions and hundreds of millions of dollars” to the U.S. economy.
“We have doctors, we have teachers, we have engineers, we have social workers,” Dhalac said. “We are part of this fabric of this amazing country of ours.”
“Everybody who’s coming in here are not really violent people, or people who are trying to kill all of us, or do this and that — that is information that is false,” Dhalac said.
“Is there some people who are violent and, you know, criminals? Of course, I’m not saying we’re not all, you know, saints, but we know when we welcome people, that we can end up having a good community, and that Maine is an example,” she added.
Dhalac then made the claim that Lewiston was a “dead town” prior to the arrival of waves of immigrants from Somalia, Cambodia and Vietnam over the last several decades.
“Look at Lewiston –Lewiston was a dead town before, you know, immigrants came, and now it’s a booming city, it’s a booming city, and it’s contributing to our economy,” Dhalac said.
“So instead of us looking into the negatives, let’s just take a look at what good can come out of this community that are coming to our spaces,” she said.
Lewiston is indeed a “booming city” — police recently reported that the city has seen nearly 30 shooting incidents this year, many of which involve youth in the city’s immigrant community.
In August, gunshots interrupted a refugee organization’s back-to-school event with more than 300 attendees in Lewiston’s McGraw Park. In July, a 17-year-old male, Sahal Muridi, who worked as a youth mentor with the same refugee organization, was killed in a shooting at a public housing complex — one of three shootings that same weekend.
The Lewiston Police Chief and Androscoggin County District Attorney have pointed to a lack of funding and a backlog of cases for the rise in unsolved shootings among the city’s immigrant youth.
Lewiston Police Chief David St. Pierre said at an August press conference regarding the shootings that the city plans to hold monthly informal meetings with immigrant and refugee groups based in the area , in order to “build trust” between police and the local youth.
Later in the town hall event, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows was asked by a member of the audience to make a statement condemning former President Trump’s claims related to the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.
While not explicitly denouncing Trump, Bellows offered the following statement in support Maine’s immigrant community and against political violence and “violent rhetoric” more broadly:
I will say here and now that immigrants make Maine a better place, that the New Mainer community here in Maine has strengthened our economy, strengthened our communities, brought love and light and laughter and good food and culture to our state.
That the presence of leaders like representative Deqa Dhalac and Representative Mana Abdi [D-Lewiston] make our legislature better and stronger, and that it shouldn’t be a Democrat or Republican issue to recognize our shared humanity, and to say political violence is wrong, violent rhetoric is wrong, dehumanizing people is wrong, and to spread lies, to spread lies about people, to create fear, is absolutely wrong.
It’s immoral, and so it really needs to stop, because we have — we’ve seen fear spread. We’ve seen property attacks, we’ve seen acid thrown on cars, apparently. We know we’ve seen swatting.
My mom, when I was swatted, said, ‘what’s swatting?’ Swatting is a fake emergency, all calling in bomb threats to schools to hospitals. That is wrong, and I think all of us, elected officials and members of the media, have a responsibility to say let’s agree to disagree about policy, let’s debate policy, but let’s stop the name calling, let’s stop the dehumanization, and let’s stand up for our shared humanity.
So that’s that’s my statement, and I am proud to have been in solidarity with this community for a long time, and I will continue to advocate for the rights of everyone to participate in our democracy.
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