An immigration attorney suspended by Maine’s high court in July for being “an imminent threat to clients” was also sanctioned by the Department of Health and Human Services this spring for running group homes that the agency said posed health and safety risks to its residents.
Attorney Felix Hagenimana of Portland is the owner of Beyond Residential Care, which operates under a program that provides full-time care to people with severe intellectual disabilities. The firm was among two companies kicked off the state’s MaineCare provider network in May following site visits that found conditions severe enough to warrant an emergency revocation of its provider license.
The other firm, Paradise Residential Services, also lost its MaineCare provider license and is appealing the decision. The two revocations were among a list of 35 providers that DHHS highlighted this month in a blog post designed to detail its program integrity and fraud prevention efforts. Most of the providers listed were disenrolled for not filing a reimbursement claim for more than a year — not for suspected fraud or substandard care.
The agency’s post on its website came amid federal scrutiny of the state’s administration of MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program providing healthcare services to nearly 1 in 3 Mainers. The Trump administration is spotlighting Democratic-controlled states as part of its national focus on fraud among Medicaid providers, specifically those operated by recent immigrants to the U.S.
Hagenimana, who has said previously that he immigrated to Maine in 2011 after the Rwandan genocide, is disputing DHHS claims stemming from its payment suspension notice in March. Its notice includes details from complaints and site visits at Beyond Residential Care’s group homes, including inspections that found dog feces and urine on pads in bedrooms, clients in beds with urine-soaked sheets and evidence of insect infestation. Some inspections found sparingly stocked refrigerators, clients left without supervision and unsecured medications.
According to DHHS, Beyond Residential Care enrolled as a MaineCare provider in 2022 and received $16.6 million in reimbursements from the program since then. Paradise Residential Services enrolled in 2021 and has received $28.2 million, according to DHHS.
Hagenimana disputed the state’s allegations in an email to Maine Public. He said he’s suing the agency for access to the records used to justify its claims that Beyond Residential Care committed a range of violations dating to 2024. He argued that some of the violations came before his company began caring for clients.
“Any allegation of abuse, neglect, or abandonment warrants serious review, but responsibility must be assigned to the provider serving the individual at the relevant time,” he said. “[Beyond Residential Care] believes these apparent date and attribution discrepancies raise legitimate questions about the Department’s underlying recordkeeping and are among the reasons BRC has sought the supporting records through court proceedings.”
Hagenimana has also disputed the allegations that led to the suspension of his law license.
In July, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court suspended Hagenimana following a detailed complaint by the Board of Overseers of the Bar, an independent agency that regulates the state legal system.
The complaint was filed under seal, but the Portland Press Herald summarized its allegations in July. The bar’s attorneys alleged that Hagenimana failed to file important immigration documents on behalf of his clients, in some cases leading to their deportation. The bar also accused him of having clients write their own filings or instructing his employees to do so using artificial intelligence.
The bar estimated that Hagenimana and Asylum Services LLC, which he co-owns, oversaw roughly 1,500 cases and charged between $1,000 and $7,000 for representation.
In a July 12 social media video, Hagenimana challenged many of the assertions made in the petition, saying they lacked context and misrepresented his work on asylum cases. He cited statistics that suggested that he was successful in those cases the majority of the time.
“Those results are difficult to reconcile with the public impression that my practice was one of systemic incompetence or that I routinely failed people who trusted me,” he said.
Nevertheless, the law court saw “exigent circumstances” in the bar’s petition and ordered Hagenimana to turn over all client files, computers and phones used to conduct legal work. He was prohibited from leaving the state until he did so. The court also assigned attorneys to work on behalf of his clients.
The sanctions by DHHS and the bar against Hagenimana mark a stark turn for an attorney who graduated from the University of Maine School of Law in 2018 and was subsequently highlighted by immigrant advocates. He was announced as a board member of the ACLU of Maine in 2022 and featured by the Immigration Legal Advocacy Project the following year.
Sam Crankshaw, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Maine, said Hagenimana completed his board term last year and left in December.
“He did not resign and was not asked to leave,” Crankshaw said.
Documents included in DHHS’ emergency licensing revocation show that Beyond Residential Care started facing scrutiny for its practices in 2024. The agency’s interest appeared to intensify in December when it conducted site visits to the company’s group homes between Dec. 12 and 16. Documents described “urgent concerns” that officials relayed to the company, but no corrective action was taken. One note said that the company denied that deficiencies found in those site visits had actually occurred.
DHHS notified the company on March 6 that its MaineCare provider license had been revoked. The agency said the revocation took effect 60 days later.
Asked by Maine Public why he became involved in the full-time care of people with intellectual disabilities and autism, Hageninama said he had been a live-in house manager for more than six years before starting the company.
“I care deeply about adults with intellectual disabilities and autism, and BRC was founded to provide supports centered on safety, dignity, community inclusion and respect for each person’s autonomy,” he said.
He went on to emphasize the importance of client independence, saying a person’s “living arrangements and personal preferences” should be evaluated while assessing the quality of care “not simply recast as evidence of inadequate care.”
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.