The once-dying New England mill town of Lewiston in Maine has been revived by an influx of some 7,500 immigrants over the last 16 years.
Richard Rodrigue, a resident, believes the refugees resuscitated his town, plugging the population drain that had threatened to cripple it, opening shops and restaurants in boarded-up storefronts. But he also agrees with Donald Trump that there should be no more of them, at least not now.
The mills that line the river sit mostly shuttered today, and a quarter of children grow up poor in the county of 1,07,000. So Mr. Trump’s supporters here tie their embrace of his immigration clampdown to their economic anxieties.
In early 2001, a few refugee families struggling to afford housing in Portland ventured 30 miles north and found a city in retreat. The town morphed in a matter of months into a laboratory for what happens when culture suddenly shifts. Maine’s population is 94% white, and its citizens were abruptly confronted with hundreds of black Muslims, barely able to speak English.
When the refugees began arriving, Tabitha Beauchesne was a student at Lewiston High School. Her new classmates were poor, but Ms. Beauchesne was poor too. It felt to her then, and it still feels to her now, that the refugees got more help than her family.
Once a Barack Obama supporter, Ms. Beauchesne turned to Mr. Trump and she cheers his efforts to curb the flow of refugees into the U.S.
Yet many on the outskirts of Lewiston have quietly stewed over the change in their county and Mr. Trump’s “America First” message rings especially true with them.
Thirty miles up the highway, David Lovewell stood in the parking lot of the paper mill where he used to work, before it shed hundreds of jobs. Now he runs a logging company with his sons just outside the town of Livermore Falls. A few months ago, business got so bad he laid off eight employees.
He looks to Mr. Trump to strike a better balance to build an economy where his sons don’t have to battle to barely get by and, after that, design an immigration system that keeps America’s promise of open arms. “I guess it could sound like bigotry,” he said. “But we’re hurting. Americans are hurting.”
