Last March, Anadia Miguel was 7 months pregnant and inconsolable in a temporary shelter for asylum seekers in Portland. A year later, much has changed.
In recent years, thousands of asylum seekers, mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, have made their way to Maine, hearing that it's a safe haven. From January to June, more than 1,600 arrived in Portland in need of help. The city found itself frequently overwhelmed, with little to no space available in its shelters as families, including many with small children, kept coming. Community groups, nonprofits and churches helped house and guide the newcomers. The city turned the gym in the Portland Expo into temporary housing from the spring into late summer. Our photographers spent months this year documenting the lives of new asylum seekers trying to make their way in an unfamiliar place and checking in on others who had been for years to see how their lives in Maine had turned out.
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing anniversaries hold up the gravity of nuclear weapons and remind us of the significant risks caused by providing weapons for the war Russia started in Ukraine. Instead of seeking a diplomatic path to avoid greater disaster, the United States continues to spend billions of dollars on fighting. To help understand […]
As the war in Ukraine drags on with no end in sight, and as Congress pumps out ever-larger defense appropriations, many Americans are beginning to question what this war is all about and if it will ever end. There is a growing concern that our record-high military budget leaves little left over for our schools, […]
In 'Long Way Home,' Press Herald reporters and photographers told the story of the large influx of asylum seekers arriving in Maine in recent years, fleeing their homelands and embarking on dangerous journeys to make a new life in Maine.