ICE-watchers get creative after the killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, as Trump’s immigration crackdown takes a more secretive approach

Most of the time, the scene outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the small, coastal town of Scarborough, Maine, could be confused for a nature watch in “Vacationland”, the slogan on state license plates.

People sitting in lawn chairs under a tent. Birds chirping. The sound of the breeze moving through the trees.

But when four Escalades zoom into the ICE facility parking lot on an August afternoon, the group springs out of their chairs, binoculars and clipboards in hand. Some rapidly call out license plate numbers, makes and models, while another scribbles the information down. This is what monitoring ICE operations looks like in the east coast’s most sparsely populated state: documenting the agency’s unmarked vehicles and keeping a record of detainments – the people arriving for routine appointments or brought in by agents and never seen leaving.