Help Gratien, a legal asylum seeker detained by ICE

Gratien Milandou Wamba had done everything correctly. Shortly after arriving in the US having fled the political unrest of The Congo, he received both a US social security number and a 5 year work permit from the federal government. He had also applied for asylum. He was employed as a Corrections Officer, where he was vetted and certified by the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. He had his own apartment, he attended Bible study and he was paying his income taxes. He had no criminal record whatsoever. On the morning of April 19th, 2025, Gratien was detained by two ICE officers while driving to work for his employer, The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department. He has been held in detention ever since. They have not let him outside, and he has yet to see the sun since he was picked up. This is an effort to raise the funds necessary to cover his legal costs associated with his release and his pending asylum application.

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Here is Gratien's Story:

Gratien Milandou Wamba wasn’t ready to leave his homeland. Born and raised in Brazzaville, Congo, he was always surrounded by family. His brothers were part of his daily adult life. His sisters were living close so they could help their aging parents. His fiancé was pregnant with twins. Gratien wanted to stay close to his loving family in his hometown, but the violence was getting worse, all at the hands of The Congolese Party of Labour (CPL). For the past 40 years, the CPL has been led by a dictator, Denis Sassou Nguesso, who “doesn't hesitate to use violence to bring their opponents to silence,” Gratien wrote to me from his jail cell in New Hampshire. Women in The Congo seem to be the most susceptible, as the sexual violence on innocent woman is both condoned and encouraged within the CPL.

Gratien’s brother is a member of an opposition party. UDH-Yuki (“Union of Humanist Democrats”) is a political party whose mission is “to bring the return and consolidation of peace in our country.” UDH and their objective for peace runs counter to Nguesso’s corruption among the existing government. A friend of Gratien’s was murdered for taking action subversive against the CPL, and Gratien knew that the government had flagged him as a traitor as well.

These are Gratien’s words: “I was arrested in March 2021, I was taken to prison where I was tortured and threatened with death for the simple reason of having participated in an opposition meeting of which my brother was a member. After prison, unidentified men came to arrest me again on the pretext that I was identified among men who undermined the security of the State. I was imprisoned again in the General Intelligence Directorate, left without food or water for many days. I was threatened with accepting their terms, otherwise I would not get out of prison.” Gratien has detailed more of his struggles. “My older sister was raped and kidnapped in June 2022 on her way home from work by men in police uniforms who accused her of being a sister to the country’s enemies. Later, they returned to my house and threatened my fiancee to say where they could find me, they hit her over and over and kicked her between the legs, she lost a 5-month old twin pregnancy.”

Gratien knew he had to leave the country because his life was at risk. It was not easy to get out of The Congo as he was wanted by the government for his opposition to their violent regime. Ultimately, he was successful in fleeing his homeland before the government could find him and inflict more harm and horror.

Gratien arrived in the US on May 29th, 2023. He was granted a B2 visa for 6 months. 3 months after arriving in the US, he applied for asylum under a program that the federal government had run for decades. He also applied for a work permit, which he was granted for 5 years in duration. He applied for and received a US social security number. He applied for a job at the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and was hired as a Corrections Officer at the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Maine. He attended the Maine Criminal Justice Academy for Correction’s Officers and graduated in the class of 2024. He was working long days and nights at the jail, performing a dangerous job of monitoring criminals locked up behind bars. He attended Bible study groups. He was active in his community.

I met Gratien in the summer of 2024 while we were both pumping gas into our vehicles at 7–11 on Washington Ave in Portland, Maine. I guessed from his appearance that he was African, and I knew that many Africans speak French.

“Do you speak French?” I asked him, in French. He smiled that huge smile back at me.

“Oui.”

“Do you have children?” I followed up. My two young children were bi-lingual having spent the previous year in rural France, and I wanted them to maintain their French tongue by interacting with other French speaking children now that they had returned to Maine.

“Pas encore,” he said. Not Yet. We both laughed a little bit and kept speaking to one another as we fueled up our cars. I was eager to improve my French, and he was looking to improve his English. I gave him my business card and he called me later that week. We started to meet at coffeeshops in Portland, and we would speak French and English together. He would help me with his native tongue, and I would help him with my own.

The more time I spent with Gratien, the more I learned about his story, both back in The Congo and then here in Maine since he’d left home. Despite all of the hardship and suffering he and his family had endured, he would smile and laugh and only focus on the positive things in his life. It was clear that this man’s heart was full of compassion and love.

“I have a good job,” he said. “It is hard because I am around criminals all day and they say racist things to me, and they even threaten me with violence when they get out, but it is a good job and I am happy to have work.” Despite the pain of his past, he was smiling.

In November 2024, I offered Gratien a place to live. He had been trying to move out of his sister’s overcrowded apartment in Portland for over a year but had been unable to secure his own housing. He was an African immigrant with broken English and he was easily stigmatized. He didn’t have many connections in Portland, he was mostly alone, and I wanted to help. I had just returned from a year abroad myself, living in a community where I didn’t speak the language, where I didn’t have many connections and where a deep loneliness ensued. Upon returning to the US, I told myself I would try to help someone in Maine who might be in a similar place I was in while living somewhere foreign. There is so much loneliness out there in our modern world, and people are suffering in silence without a clear path out of their misery. When I met and befriended Gratien, I wanted to help him where I could, and I was able to offer him a place to live.

For 6 months, Gratien and I were close friends and quasi roommates. We would go to dinner in the city and help each other with our languages. He would come on maintenance jobs with me and help me with projects. He visited me and my family in rural Maine, and just like anyone who’s known him, my family came to admire his tender heart and his willingness to help others. He would speak French to my children with an easy way about it. We would go running in the woods. He would help me split firewood. He would correct my broken French with patience as I struggled with it.

He was working for the Sheriff’s office in Portland and paying his income taxes. A devout Christian his entire life, he was a member of a local church group. He was involved in the Congolese community in Maine. He was dating. He wanted to meet a woman and have children. He was trying to upgrade his car to an SUV so he could drive in the snow more easily. He would call me and we would make plans to hang out. He always paid his rent on time and in full. He shoveled snow from the driveway on his own accord. He was quiet and respectful in his apartment, always clean and orderly. He has no criminal record nor behavior whatsoever.

As winter rolled into spring with a new federal government making changes, we were all aware of the immigration reform sweeping the nation and the devastating effects it was having on innocent people. He thought he was safe from ICE detaining him because he had followed the legal path outlined by the government. He was not an illegal. He arrived on a tourist visa but he quickly applied for asylum, buying him more legal time in the United States. He was advised not to renew his visa as he was no longer a tourist. He had a 5 year work permit from the government, a US social security number, a steady job as a prison guard, and he was waiting for an update from the immigration office in Portland.

Yet on April 19th, 2025, Gratien was pulled over while driving to work early in the morning. Two men in plain clothes with badges on their belts took him in for detention based on his expired visa. He tried to explain about his work permit, his job at the jail, and his pending asylum application. The ICE officers let him make one phone call before they took his phone, and he called his brother in law, who came to pick up his car. They brought him to an immigration center in Scarborough, Maine.

I’m not entirely sure what happened next because I went two weeks without hearing from Gratien, which was very abnormal. We were communicating many times a week, and I would see him weekly every time I came to Portland. I could see that neither his iMessages nor his WhatsApp messages were being received on his phone, which was shut off. I called his place of employment simply asking if he was showing up to work or not, and they wouldn’t divulge anything to me. I was at his apartment all the time and he, nor his car, were anywhere to be found. Neighbors had not seen him, and I was fearing the worst. All of the inmates at the County Jail are public record and he wasn’t being detained in the local jail, which was also his place of employment.

I finally searched the US Immigration website for detainees and his name popped up. He was being held at the Stratford County Correctional Facility in Dover, New Hampshire. As I looked at my computer screen and saw his name on the US Immigration detainee website with a booking number, my heart sank. The State certified and entrusted him to be a prison guard. Then the federal government grabbed him against his will and deemed him a criminal himself, throwing him on the other side of a jail cell in the institution of corrections that he knew too well.

Gratien is currently incarcerated in a wing housed with all immigrants. Mostly Spanish speaking, he says, but all languages from all over the world. Gratien is fluent in French, Italian, English, and six African languages (Lingala, Kikongo, Teke, Lari, Dondo and Kitouba) so he is able to communicate more than most other immigrants inside with him. He says that people are always getting transferred out and new people are coming in every other day. He had not been outside nor seen the sun since he arrived at the end of April. His current cell mate is Brazilian who does not speak English, but between Gratien’s Italian and his cell mate’s Portuguese, they get by. He says his closest friend inside so far is a Chinese man from Hong Kong who had been living in the greater Boston area for 20 years. Gratien told me that this man was picked up, was successfully released on bond, and then was picked up by ICE again.

Gratien’s sister, also a Congolese immigrant awaiting asylum from the US Government who is living in Portland, is too afraid to visit him in jail for fear of her own detainment. “There are ICE agents everywhere,” Gratien told me. “I told her not to come.” He was referred to a lawyer from an inmate early on and the attorney graciously accepted his case. He was grateful because so many others around him could not secure legal representation, and instead were accepting deportation.

Along with his sister and brother-in-law still living in Portland, we were able to gather all of the necessary documents to support his case for a release on bond. This included letters and disturbing photos of violence from friends and family in the Congo explaining his reasons for leaving, his application for Asylum, letters of support from his landlord and friends, including his church group. His employer, The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office, refused to write a letter on his behalf, nor were they willing to verify his employment status, simply stating that they “won’t get involved with matters of immigration.” He was denied release on bond because the court considered him a flight risk; that if he was released, he couldn’t be trusted to show up at his court hearing.

Feeling utterly confused by the process and all the legal jargon necessary to understand what is actually happening, he grew frustrated with his legal council. Gratien is now working with a new attorney, who is working with him on his immigration case file, in addition to the Bond hearing that is required for his release. We have translated copious Congolese documents from French to English for the judge to have access to. My wife, Lauren, has been the translator between myself and Gratien’s sister, whose French is far superior than her English. The process to help Gratien has been layered with difficulties and setbacks, compounded by the ever-changing political climate at the national level.

Since Gratien has been detained, the violence against his family back in the Congo has escalated. The gender-based sexual violence that is happening at the hands of the Congolese Labour Party is so atrocious that I cannot even describe it here. It is no surprise to him nor his family that the US federal government included The Republic of Congo as one of the 12 countries with newly restricted travel bans to the US. As Gratien said, “the fact is most people run away from the violence and injustice, my country is not stable and safe for those who speak loudly about the wrong things that are happening in the country. Most are jailed for many years, the others just killed or disappeared in the nature…” Gratien has said again and again that if he is deported back to The Congo, he will be killed by the government. He fears for his life.

Gratien called me recently and he was in tears. He was crumbling. “I didn’t do anything,” he pleaded. “I have done everything legal and correct. And they treat me like a criminal.” He said that the stress is so bad that sometimes he cannot eat, he cannot sleep, and that it is even difficult to drink water.

This GoFundMe page is an effort to raise the funds for his legal case that are necessary for his release. We are now working with new legal counsel that focuses on African immigration asylum cases, specifically within the Boston Immigration Court, which is where Gratien’s casefile is resting. We need all the help we can get to secure him the representation that he needs to liberate him from this unjustified detainment at the hands of the US Federal Government.

Gratien, myself and his family thank you kindly from the bottom of our hearts. Nobody can do this alone, and we are grateful for the cooperation of everyone who can contribute.

Merci beaucoup.

Portland Press Herald News Article

Portland Press Herald - Opinion Piece on Gratien