Domingo Tot Quip was sitting at a Portland bus stop on his way to his dishwashing job in January when immigration agents arrested him, deported him to Guatemala within a week, and set off a monthslong legal fight to bring him home. Now, more than six months later, the U.S. government has agreed to fly the 31-year-old Portland resident back to Maine after his attorney says Immigration and Customs Enforcement mistook him for someone else entirely.
Attorney Kerry Doyle, a partner at Green and Spiegel Immigration Law in Boston, said Tot Quip was deported because agents believed he was somebody else, according to Spectrum News. Doyle said ICE agents arrested Tot Quip on January 14 and took him to an ICE facility without confirming his identity through fingerprints, a photograph, or any other method. He had a Guatemalan passport and identification card in his backpack at the time he was expelled, Doyle said.
Court filings reported by the Portland Press Herald lay out an even starker timeline. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sauter acknowledged in an April court filing that ICE received a federal court order on January 27 explicitly prohibiting Tot Quip's transfer or removal — and deported him to Guatemala the very next day. Brian Sullivan, assistant director of ICE's Boston field office, admitted in a separate filing that the agency “inadvertently removed” Tot Quip and acknowledged the “gravity” of the error, stating officials were working to rectify it.
A Habeas Petition Met With ‘Unable to Identify’
Doyle filed a petition on Tot Quip's behalf in federal district court in Massachusetts on January 26, just two days before he was put on a plane. According to court filings cited by the Press Herald, when Doyle filed that habeas petition, ICE initially reported it was unable to identify Tot Quip at all — because agents had mistakenly processed him under the name of another Guatemalan man who shared his first name and birth date. Doyle said ICE agents only realized they might have deported the wrong person after the fact.
Before he was put on a deportation flight, Tot Quip was processed through ICE's Boston field office and transferred to a central federal staging facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, per the Press Herald's reporting. Doyle noted that Tot Quip primarily speaks an indigenous Guatemalan language, with Spanish as his second language and English as his third — a communication gap that likely made it harder for him to assert his own identity while being shuffled through the system.
Tot Quip's coworkers contacted Doyle's office after learning of his arrest. He had been working as a dishwasher at a local Portland restaurant and lost most of his belongings once he was deported. Doyle said she wants to know exactly which agency arrested him in the first place, noting that ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, or another agency could have been responsible.
A Second Man Arrested at the Same Bus Stop
Tot Quip was not alone that morning. Another man was arrested alongside him in the same incident and was also deported — but that man, unlike Tot Quip, was properly identified before removal, according to Doyle. Doyle said she believes both men were racially profiled, telling Spectrum News they were simply sitting at a bus stop when agents approached. “Maine is becoming more diverse,” Doyle said, adding that she opposes targeting people because of their skin color or appearance.
Doyle said she hopes the Cumberland County District Attorney's Office or the Maine Attorney General's Office will investigate the incident, and both offices may look into what happened. She has also said she may sue the U.S. government on Tot Quip's behalf. While the government has agreed to expedite humanitarian parole and pay for both Tot Quip's return flight and a replacement Guatemalan passport, Doyle cautioned that ICE retains legal authority to seek removal proceedings against him again once he re-enters the country.
Part of a Wider Enforcement Surge
Tot Quip's arrest came during the January 21 launch of Operation Catch of the Day, a Department of Homeland Security enforcement surge across Maine that federal officials said targeted roughly 1,400 criminal suspects — though local reporting found most of those detained had no prior criminal records. The Press Herald's broader review found that Tot Quip's case was not an isolated error: dozens of individuals nationwide, including U.S. citizens and immigrants with court-ordered stays, have been wrongfully deported as federal authorities accelerated removal timelines during the operation.
The fallout in Maine has been significant. In February, as the operation ramped up, U.S. Senator Susan Collins publicly asked DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to halt the sweeps amid protests from labor unions and community leaders over alleged racial profiling, according to The Guardian. Maine lawmakers later passed “ICE Out of Maine” legislation restricting state and local police from assisting federal immigration enforcement, as reported by Beacon.
Tot Quip's ordeal joins a string of ICE enforcement controversies Hoodline has tracked in Maine this year, including a Maine nurse detained then freed and a fatal ICE-involved shooting in Biddeford. For now, Tot Quip's return does not resolve the case: his attorney says the questions of who arrested him, why identity checks failed, and whether any agency will be held accountable remain open even as he prepares to come home.
