Stop the Deportation Machine

Police sweeps. Mass raids and deportations. Revoked green cards. A new and expanded travel ban. The dismantling of watchdog agencies meant to oversee the immigration system. These are just some of the weapons in the Trump administration’s escalated war on migrants. Stop the Deportation Machine brings together scholars, activists, and immigration lawyers to critically assess the crimmigration system and the broader machinery of racialized state violence. We’ll connect national policies to local realities—like ICE’s use of the Cumberland County Jail to detain immigrants and reports of local police calling ICE during traffic stops. Part of the Campaign to End Cumberland County’s Cooperation with ICE, this panel calls for urgent, abolitionist action to shut down the deportation machine—here and everywhere. Sponsored by Criminology, Sociology, and the Scontras Center for Labor and Community Education.

Panelists:
Arianna Efstathiou (she/her) Immigration Lawyer with Metis Legal

Brendan McQuade (he/him), associate professor and chair, criminology department, University of Southern Maine

Adriana Mercedes Ortiz-Burnham (she/her/ella), Presente!’s Senior Director of Operations

Chair:

Jenna Wolfinger

Speaker Bios:

Arianna Efstathiou is an immigration lawyer and a graduate of the University of Maine School of Law. She has worked in the immigration legal field since 2015 and has also experienced the system personally. Arianna has a three-year-old and therefore very little free time, but she loves reading, baking, and, recently, boxing.

Brendan McQuade is an associate professor and chair of the criminology department and sociology department at the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision. He is also a member of the anti-security collective and one of the co-authors of The Security Abolition Manifesto. Brendan has published on policing, surveillance, abolition, and other topics in a variety of academic and non-academic publications, including Qualitative Sociology, Surveillance & Society, Jacobin, The Portland Press Herald and The Bangor Daily News.  Has also worked with movement organizations in Illinois, Maine, and Massachusetts to produce collaborative, grassroots shadow reports on policing and surveillance.

Adriana Mercedes Ortiz-Burnham  grew up in Maine, on unceded Wabanaki land, and in Chihuahua, on unceded Rarámuri land. Adriana’s indigenous heritage is Rarámuri (often called Tarahumara), a cousin tribe of the Chichimeca. She currently lives in Portland with her cats and wishes she read more. Before this, Adriana worked with youth of color doing leadership development and juvenile diversion. She has admired Presente’s work since its inception as the Food Brigade in 2020 and was thrilled to join the staff in the spring of 2022. Through this work she continues to widen and transform her own understanding of, and capacity for, solidarity and liberation. Loves include Aston Villa FC, true crime podcasts, and lilac season.