Charon Kinianga, 1, eats potato chips while waiting for her father in the parking lot at the Quality Inn in South Portland on Thursday, December 16, 2021.
An asylum seeker walks through the parking lot of a hotel in South Portland on Friday, January 21, 2022. Portland is currently providing shelter to about 1,150 people per night, a number officials say is bordering on a crisis and that eclipses what the city has seen at other recent points in time.
Matondo (we are not using her full name) and her one-year-old daughter in their room at the hotel they are living at in South Portland on Friday, January 21, 2022. Matondo, her husband and their daughter have been in Maine for about a month and are just one of the hundreds of families seeking asylum that are living at hotels.
Kilembo Joana Mandiangu, 16, pushes Neymar Gabriel Selemani on a bicycle through the parking lot of the Quality Inn in South Portland on Thursday, December 16, 2021. Mandiangu arrived in Maine from Angola with her parents and two sisters in mid December.
Children of immigrant families housed at the Quality Inn in South Portland board a school bus at the hotel on Tuesday, December 14, 2021.
Rebecca Mwila, center, Lidia Gomes, right, and another volunteer organize food that will be spilt up between the hotels where people are living in South Portland on Friday, January 21, 2022. Portland is currently providing shelter to about 1,150 people per night, a number officials say is bordering on a crisis and that eclipses what the city has seen at other recent points in time. Mwila volunteers multiple nights a week with the Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition to help feed the hundreds of asylum seekers who are being housed in the hotels.
Two women and a girl walk back to their rooms at the Quality Inn in South Portland after receiving backpacks stuffed with various supplies from Josh Pobrisolo, a local health officer and community paramedic with the city of South Portland, on Thursday, December 16, 2021.
In the parking lot of the Quality Inn in South Portland, Reina Dieu Merci Nsona, right, and two other women who recently arrived in Maine listen to Prince Pombo Mafumba, who is translating, about COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday, December 16, 2021.
A father takes a photo of his children with Santa Claus during a Christmas event at Eastpoint Church in South Portland on Saturday, December 18, 2021. Volunteers handed out presents, supplies and bags of treats to immigrant families that are housed in hotels in South Portland and Portland.
Luisa Mandiangu,13, standing, an 8th grader at Memorial Middle School in South Portland who came to Maine from Angola assists classmate Pedro Sebastiao 13, an 8th grader who also came from Angola with an assignment during "target time" an intervention program where students work to get caught up to grade level on a number of subjects at the middle school Wednesday, January 26, 2022.
A 38 year-old asylum seeker from Angola, going by the alias Patrick, stands for an abstract portrait at the city's Health and Human Services Department on Thursday, Feb.10, 2022.
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