Owner of Friendship market detained by ICE

The owner of a small grocery store in the Knox County town of Friendship is being held at a Massachusetts jail after his arrest by federal immigration agents over the weekend, and his lawyer is now fighting to keep him from being moved out of state.

Dhavalkumar Patel, who owns and operates Wallace's Market, was taken into custody by several U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Saturday afternoon, according to his attorney, Audrey Richardson. She said agents arrived at the store, handcuffed him without warning, and removed him from the premises.

Patel, a native of India, is now being held at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts. His attorney says his client is a hardworking member of the local community and the father of a young child. She described his arrest as "another example of ICE acting egregiously and unlawfully."

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Tuesday that Patel had been apprehended by ICE on Saturday. In a written statement, the agency alleged that Patel first entered the United States illegally in 2010, was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol shortly after, and was released from custody while his removal proceedings were pending. DHS said Patel did not appear at a scheduled immigration hearing and that a Justice Department immigration judge ordered him removed from the country on August 8, 2011. The agency stated that Patel will remain in ICE custody until he is removed.

Patel has pushed back through the federal court system. He filed a petition in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts arguing that he is being unlawfully detained. That same Saturday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued an emergency order requiring that he remain in Massachusetts for at least 72 hours. A few days later, U.S. District Judge William Young went further and barring ICE from moving him out of Massachusetts without first notifying the court, so that judges can fairly evaluate the case.

Patel's case is unfolding against the backdrop of what immigration advocates describe as a steady rise in immigration enforcement activity across Maine. The Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition runs a hotline for reporting sightings of federal agents, and the group says call volume has been climbing.

That pattern includes several other high-profile detentions in recent weeks. In early June, ICE agents took a Cumberland County corrections officer into custody in South Portland. Local officials publicly criticized the agency, accusing it of misrepresenting the man's criminal history. Roughly a week later, agents detained a man at his home in Lewiston. A federal judge later ordered that man released and raised questions about the legality of his detention.

ICE and DHS have not publicly confirmed whether enforcement operations in Maine are expanding, and both agencies have declined requests for statewide detention numbers. Federal officials have cited operational security in declining to discuss enforcement levels.

Independent data has nonetheless painted a partial picture. According to the Deportation Data Project, of the nearly 200 people taken into custody during a surge of immigration enforcement in Maine this past January, only a few dozen had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. The majority of those arrested, the data showed, had no criminal record.

Patel is asking the federal courts to rule on whether his continued detention is lawful. For now, the orders from Judges Talwani and Young keep him in Massachusetts while his case is considered, but his ultimate fate rests with the immigration proceedings that date back more than a decade.