Anti-Immigrant Activists Target Group Homes to Undermine Program for People with Autism

The Maine Wire is exploiting people with disabilities to erode trust in MaineCare program

Republican activist knocks on the door of the home of a nonverbal man with autism.

Last week, Claudia Millett of Stoneham was doing some errands when she got a call from her adult son’s case manager with an urgent question. Millet’s son is 22 years old and has a form of severe autism. He is non-verbal and lives by himself in a group home in Lewiston. His mother pays his rent and thanks to MaineCare, he gets around-the-clock care to ensure he is safe and secure while living in the community. The caseworker asked Millett if she had been contacted by anyone from the Maine Wire.

“I said, ‘no,’” Millett told me in a phone conversation. “And she said, ‘well, there’s one at the house right now.”

Later that day, the Maine Wire posted a video on its social media accounts of Republican activist Jon Fetherston outside Millett’s son’s home. He discloses the location of the home to viewers and claims he “received numerous tips from neighbors” about poor conditions inside.

“Two people came to the window and the door and said something that I couldn’t understand,” reported Fetherston to the camera. “Quite obviously not going to let [me in] or don’t want to talk to us, don’t want to let us know what’s going on.”

The video shows Fetherston banging on the door and shouting to people inside. A Black man appears in the window and makes it known that he is not going to answer any questions. In fact, direct care staff are prohibited by HIPAA from talking to reporters about their clients, which Maine Wire Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson later acknowledged in a separate video. In that same video, Fetherston also noted that there is a sign in the man’s yard indicating that a nonverbal autistic person lives there, so he clearly knew the resident would not be able to talk to him. But he persisted anyway.

“Hey, how are you? Can you come to the door? I can’t hear you!” he says to the man inside.

Featherston continues this back and forth for several minutes. Finally, he announces that “based on your actions, I’m a little worried about what’s going in there.” He asks if he should call the police. The video then cuts to Fetherston following another Black man to his car and badgering him to talk to him. But the man ignores him and drives off. The video ends with ominous music playing.

The police eventually did arrive, but not because Fetherston called them. Millett’s son’s caregivers reported Fetherston for harassment. When Millett saw the video, she was angered and alarmed. She had never heard of the Maine Wire and decided to make a post in a Lewiston community Facebook group warning others that its operatives were prowling the neighborhood and trying to gain entrance to group homes.

Fetherston later went on “Maine Wire TV” to discuss the supposed “red flags” he observed at the home. His evidence boiled down to some messed up blinds on the window and the fact that the direct care staff refused to talk to him. He said he believed that there must have been “a tussle” or “someone got entangled” in the blinds.

“What is the secrecy in these homes? Why are people hiding inside these homes? You’re doing everything you can to prove you’re guilty,” said Fetherston, adding, “I am just getting extremely worried about the care being provided for the people in these houses because it’s obvious that they’re not getting the care that they need.”

If Fetherston really wanted to know what was going on inside, he could have simply asked the mother of the resident, who tried in vain to explain what was going on in the comment section of the video. The blinds were disheveled, she says, because her son opens them up so he can see outside and his condition makes it difficult to open them properly. Millett even shared photos and videos of the inside of her son’s home to prove it was clean and orderly, even though she shouldn’t have to prove anything to these people.

“I was upset,” she told me after seeing the Maine Wire videos. “I am shocked because my son has meltdowns and he’s very sensory oriented. He’s level three autism, he’s nonverbal and he doesn’t understand stuff like that. With somebody banging on the door, he could have gone to the window and he could have been in just a pull-up or shorts and they would have been like, saying stuff about that.”

UPDATE: On Tuesday the Maine Wire posted a video from a neighbor’s door cam showing Millett’s son in his underwear. This video is from March, 2025. Millett told me her son often tries to get out of the home and elope when a staff member goes to the bathroom or when he thinks they're not paying attention. Someone called the police and the staff were fired after this incident. Still, the Maine Wire refused to interview the mother after she provided an explanation.

Millett said her son previously had bad experiences at other group homes. At a home in Portland, he jumped out of a second floor window and fractured five vertebrae. But she said the staff in Lewiston are very attentive and treats him very well.

“They’re very nice,” she said. “They’re knowledgeable and they’re really good with my son. Sure, there’s been some issues, but everything is fine now. He’s not being neglected. The group home manager who works there is awesome with my son.”

Millett said if neighbors are complaining it could be because her son screams very loud when he’s having an episode and it can take some time to de-escalate him. However, she added that she contacted the police to see if they had received any complaints and the last one they received was in March, 2025. Despite Millett’s attempt to explain the facts of the situation, her voice was quickly lost in a sea of ignorant comments.

Millett tries to make her voice heard in a sea of ignorant comments.

“I just don’t think they’re going about it the right way,” Millett said of Fetherston’s tactics. “Like they could have contacted me by now because I’ve made a few comments in that video saying that he’s my son. But they haven’t even attempted to contact me and ask me questions.”

Instead, Maine Wire Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson has concluded, with absolutely zero evidence, that Millett’s son’s home is “being used as a money-making scheme and free shelter for the paroled illegal alien population.” The only solution he says, is to abolish Medicaid and deport all of the direct care workers caring for people like Millett’s son.

These tactics are not only incredibly unethical and exploitative, but the Maine Wire’s lies put caregivers in danger to advance a political agenda. Knox County Republican Chair Heather Sprague claims the video somehow proves that “Autistic adults in Maine are being held captive” by African immigrants.

A Nationwide Strategy to Erode Trust in Programs for People with Disabilities

The Maine Wire is just one of many right-wing pressure groups and influencers who have sought to undermine public trust in Medicaid in order to justify its elimination. By creating a racist narrative that Medicaid is just one big “African fraud scheme,” they are also providing the propaganda to justify further ICE raids on so-called “blue states” like Minnesota and Maine. It’s the same “Somali fraud” narrative the Trump administration used as a pretext for the ICE surge in Minneapolis and in Maine a few weeks ago.

Last week, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announced that he was targeting Democratic-run states, including Maine, with investigations into alleged Medicaid overbilling and improper payments. Dr. Oz demanded that Maine answer questions about allegations that it made $45.6 million in improper or potentially improper payments for rehabilitative and community support services for children with autism. However, the report does not allege that any fraud occurred. Governor Janet Mills fired back that the Trump administration was clearly using “allegations of fraud as a pretense to send ICE and other weaponized federal agents into states led by Democrats.”

“This is part of President Trump’s malicious playbook of using his administration’s power to punish anyone who dares to stand up to him or who disagrees with him,” said Governor Mills in a statement.

In a statement, Maine DHHS pointed out that the federal audit did not allege that any fraud was committed, nor did it question the appropriateness or necessity of services. Rather, it simply flagged that MaineCare fee-for-service payments for Rehabilitative and Community Support Services increased significantly from 2019 to 2023 due to a number of factors, including increases in member population, Maine’s efforts to increase the availability of behavioral health services, reimbursement rate increases in MaineCare coverage for these services, and increased utilization of services.

“These increases, necessarily, resulted in increased costs, but also served the health care needs of Maine patients and their families,” Maine DHHS wrote.

For more on the Maine Wire’s deceitful propaganda about Medicaid spending, check out this excellent piece by Amy Fried.

Section 21 is a Critical Lifeline for Maine Families

I have written extensively in the past about MaineCare’s Section 21 program and the struggles of parents to find quality long-term care for their adult children with disabilities. When young people with autism and intellectual disabilities graduate from high school, what should be a celebration can quickly turn into a nightmare for parents because of the shortage of community-based supports. Parents don’t want their kids to be warehoused in a nursing home somewhere. They want them to thrive in the community and reach their full potential.

But because Section 21 typically reimburses care workers for one-on-one care to clients with very high needs, it is also very expensive and has been chronically underfunded for years. Low reimbursement rates have meant wages for direct care professionals are extremely low, ranging from between $15.77 and $19.61 an hour depending on location, experience, and employer. This has made it very difficult to recruit and retain qualified staff. Although the state has provided more funding for Section 21 in recent years, there are still about 2,254 people on the waiting list for services, according to the Maine Parents Coalition. With the lack of providers, parents of these individuals sometimes have to quit their jobs to care for them, putting the family in financial peril.

However, as immigrants from Africa have come to Maine seeking asylum from war, extreme poverty and violence, they have become a crucial part of the direct care workforce. In fact, the portion of people of color in the health care workforce in Maine rose from 4 percent in 2014 to 10 percent in 2025. I have relatives who receive care from wonderful, caring people who came here from Africa seeking freedom and security. What we should be doing is increasing funding for this critical program and paying these dedicated care workers what they deserve.