A man who was detained by immigration officials in January is back at his job as a Cumberland County corrections officer, the sheriff confirmed Friday.

Emanuel Ludovic Mbuangi Landila was apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Portland’s Bayside neighborhood. He was granted bond in February.

His detention — as well as a video depicting it — spurred a series of events that ultimately resulted in ICE removing its detainees from the Cumberland County Jail.

Sheriff Kevin Joyce said in an emailed statement Friday that the corrections officer returned to work last month and is enrolled in corrections training.

Landila was recruited in February 2025 and had no criminal history, according to a letter Joyce submitted to immigration court in February. In the letter, the sheriff described Landila as an enthusiastic and committed employee who was hired with a valid federal Employment Authorization Document from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Landila applied for asylum after entering the country in 2019, his attorney said in court. Immigration experts have said people generally receive employment authorization after applying for asylum and waiting years for court hearings.

Video of Landila’s apprehension shows him shouting, “I’m a corrections officer!” as several masked agents surround him, pull him from his car and handcuff him.

After Landila was apprehended, Joyce described ICE’s practices as “bush league” during a news conference. He criticized the tactics federal agents used to arrest him, such as having several officers detain the officer and leaving his car running on the side of the road.

Joyce said ICE officials called his office hours after the news conference to notify him that they were moving all of their detainees out of the Portland facility.

In a statement about the decision, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson blamed Joyce for employing a “lawbreaker” and “illegal alien,” saying he and his office had deliberately flouted federal immigration laws.

Asked at the time whether he thought ICE’s move was in retaliation for his criticism, Joyce replied: “I’ll leave it up to the public to determine whether or not that is the case. It seems like an immediate response, right?”

County officials have said ICE’s decision to remove detainees from the jail will be costly for taxpayers.

The jail was paid $150 per day for each ICE detainee held at the Portland facility, under a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service. That agreement accounted for more than $2 million of the jail’s budget.

Without those federal funds, County Manager James Gailey has said the county would need to collect about 14% more tax revenue next year.

Advocates have been attending county commissioners meetings for months to protest the federal contract, demanding that officials remove ICE from the agreement. In November, commissioners voted to keep the contract in place.

But they revisited the issue Tuesday and agreed to remove ICE from the contract — which the Portland nonprofit Presente! Maine described as a decision that “should have happened months ago.”