Maine Restaurant Trains Staff To Handle ICE Like They're The FBI
KEY POINTS
- •In mid-January, Andrew M. Volk held a staff meeting at Hunt & Alpine in Portland, Maine, to prepare for potential ICE encounters.
- •Increased ICE presence made several businesses close as their workers feared harassment or arrest near downtown Portland.
- •Volk used his position as a white business owner to openly support his staff amid growing anxieties about raids and community disruption.
Andrew M. Volk, a 42-year-old white heterosexual man and owner of Portland, Maine's Hunt & Alpine, turned his cozy restaurant into the frontline of ‘ICE Awareness 101’ in mid-January. Faced with an unannounced cameo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents just two blocks from City Hall, Andrew gathered his staff of 10 for a crash course on ‘What to do if ICE knocks’. The memo included radical concepts like not answering questions, insisting on warrants for private areas, and sneakily recording every moment like it's the new reality TV. Meanwhile, local workers dodge shifts out of sheer fear, closing neighboring businesses and making Andrew's calm ‘we’re in this together’ pep talk sound like a TED Talk on surviving a hostage crisis. Even his children's schools are attendance disasters, with dozens of kids skipping classes as their parents crouch in fear. Andrew uses his ‘white guy with a microphone’ privilege to shout support from the front lines, knowing that in this new Portland nightlife, the only thing more terrifying than a busy bar is the sight of ICE agents lingering in plain sight.
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Only in 2024 Maine: your local gastropub doubles as an ICE de-escalation boot camp because holding a spatula no longer guarantees safety at work.
Running a restaurant used to mean juggling orders, now it’s about teaching ‘How not to open the door to ICE Agents 101’—next up, cocktail recipes for panic attacks.
Portland’s new nightlife vibe: dining with a side of subtle deportation anxiety. ‘Would you like ICE with that?’ takes a horrifyingly literal turn.
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 1/27/2026 | Author: Lauren Crosby Medlicott
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