About eight years ago, when she was a student at Lewiston High School, Jaylee Shropshire-Nsuka said her friends introduced her to a classmate named Delfino Nsuka.
"I feel like it's always been, like, not to be so cliche, but like, love at first sight," she recalled recently.
She said Delfino was goofy, with a bubbly personality, and could always make her laugh. They soon started dating, and have been together ever since. Last month, they got married.
Shropshire-Nsuka said they both work as direct support professionals, assisting people with disabilities, and that Delfino has a second job as a FedEx driver.
Outside of work, she said they just like to hang out together, go on the occasional day trip to Boston and watch some of her favorite reality TV shows, even if they may not be his first choice.
"We watched 'Love Island' this summer," Shropshire-Nsuka said with a laugh. "He's a good sport."
Shropshire-Nsuka said Delfino, originally from Angola, has a pending asylum case. She is an American citizen, and she said they've been saving up for legal fees to help Delfino pursue permanent status through their marriage.
Then, on Thursday evening, she said Delfino called her to say he had been pulled over on his way home from work.
"Oh, my God, my heart just sank," Shropshire-Nsuka recalled. "I just knew it, like I had just dread inside of me. I knew it wasn't going to end well."
She said she raced to his location. But by the time she arrived, she said Delfino and the agents were gone, his car sitting empty in a parking lot.
Shropshire-Nsuka said she didn't know where Delfino was until the next morning, when he called from an ICE facility in Massachusetts.
"My husband is here legally. He's not a criminal. He has no record," she said. "There's no reason why he was taken."
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Situations like this have played out with increasing frequency across Maine since ICE began its expanded operations here last week, which it says have led to more than 200 arrests. And while the agency has said it's going after criminals, many of those detained are asylum seekers with no criminal records, according to their lawyers, family members and employers.
That was apparently the case for an Angolan man named Emanuel Landila, a corrections officer recruit at the Cumberland County Jail detained last week.
Landila's sister, Paulete Mbuangi, is a college student in Texas, where most of the family lives. Mbuangi said she learned of her older brother's arrest through a video circulated widely on social media, in which a group of agents pull Landila from his car while he repeatedly identifies himself as a corrections officer.
"It's really hard to see your brother be taken in the video, and feeling so weak, feeling so weak and unable to do anything," Mbuangi said.
A DHS spokesperson said Landila crossed the border illegally. But Mbuangi said he has a pending asylum case, and his employer, Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce, said he had legal work authorization and no criminal record.
Mbuangi said Landila is a devoted older brother to his six younger siblings. Mbuangi said when she was struggling to make friends in the U.S. because she didn't speak English, Landila got her books so she could practice.
And when she felt like the worst player on the high school basketball team, Mbuangi said Landila once again stepped in.
"He took me to the YMCA, and he started shooting the ball with me, rebounding for me," she said.
Mbuangi now plays at the collegiate level. She said Landila tunes in from Maine to watch all her games, and calls her afterward to offer feedback, whether she wants it or not.
"He thinks he's better than me, but he's not, for sure," she said, laughing. "But he does have good advice at times."
As of Saturday, Mbuangi said her brother was being held a facility in New Hampshire, and that his wife, five months pregnant, is afraid to leave her home in Portland. Mbuangi is handling communication with lawyers, while also struggling with her own emotions.
"Just being scared of not knowing what's going to happen to him," she said. "It's been hard for me to focus."
Not everyone has family in the U.S. who can fight for their release. That's the case for another Angolan man named Calebe Kalonji who was arrested last week in South Portland on his way to work, according to his friend Carlos.
Carlos gave only his first name for fear of being targeted by ICE himself. Speaking in Portuguese, Carlos said he knows Kalonji through church.
"He doesn't have close relatives here," Carlos said. "His family is those of us at the church, that's Calebe's family."
Carlos said to his knowledge, Kalonji has no criminal record, and was following the asylum process. Kalonji is now being held in Rhode Island, according to ICE's online detainee tracker.
Carlos said the recent crackdown in Maine, and the violence stemming from ICE operations around the country, has jolted the congregation, whose members mostly hail from Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The violence they're seeing here in America, he said, is like the violence they tried to leave back home.
Meanwhile, in Lewiston, Jaylee Shropshire-Nsuka is working with a lawyer to try to get her husband Delfino released on bond.
She said through dating and now marriage, their goal has always been to live a good life together, but that recently, her definition of what that means has changed.
"Him being home with me, yes. Him being safe. Security," she said. "That's a good life."
Families are not the only ones being affected by the abrupt separations from loved ones detained by ICE. Friends, neighbors and faith leaders are also feeling the loss and some are stepping in to offer help.
"My first reaction was shock and dismay but also horror," says Rev. Scott Cousineau, the senior minister at First Parish Congregational Church in Saco. On Friday, he says one of his parishioners was taken by ICE.
"When I was meeting with him just a couple of hours earlier, I had asked him, 'Are you afraid?' and he said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Even though we are here legally, we're still very afraid,'" Cousineau says.
The man, whom we're identifying only by his first name, Makengo, was arrested as he was running errands just a few blocks from his home. Couineau says just over a week ago, his wife had an emergency C-section and gave birth to a baby girl who is still in the hospital.
"Here is a man who just had a baby, who's a good man. He's not the 'worst of the worst.' He's involved in the church. His kids go to Sunday school. His kids sing in the choir. His daughter played Mary in the church Christmas pageant. And so, I was heartbroken, but also just, just so angry that this would happen to him. He's a good man. It's a good family. He's involved in the Rotary Club. So, there's just this whole maelstrom of different emotions that are bouncing around inside of me and inside all of us who know Makengo and love Makengo and love his family and his children," he says.
Cousineau says Makengo and his wife are both asylum seekers from Angola. They've lived and worked here for several years and have the legal paperwork required to be in the country. But Cousineau says Makengo's wife is now terrified that she'll also be taken by ICE, leaving their four children, including her infant daughter, alone.
"She's a wreck. She's concerned about Makengo's safety, about the safety of her children ... And so she's trying to recover from the surgery ... Her blood pressure is elevated. She can't sleep ... And thankfully, there are some folks in the neighborhood that are supporting her and some friends that are supporting her. But, again we're trying to keep her kind of squirreled away so that something doesn't happen to her."
The church is also coordinating a response to help the family. Cousineau says there were a lot of tears at Sunday worship. But at the same, he says volunteers have been fielding dozens of calls from Rotary Club members, nurses and complete strangers who have heard about the family's plight and who want to help deliver meals, breast milk, diapers, rides — whatever they can do to help.
"One of the things that has been an amazing ray of light in all of this is the outpouring of support ... We're doing all those different things to be able to support them because we don't know how long Makengo will be in custody," he says.
