Mainers from across the state gathered in Portland over the weekend to talk about racial profiling. Native Americans, African Americans, Muslims, African refugees, Latinos and others gave testimony about their personal experiences with law enforcement as part of a nationwide effort in support of a federal ban on racial profiling.

Eda Trejo from El Salvador says her recent treatment at the hands of Portland police makes her now less inclined to trust law enforcement officials in her adopted homeland. She feels she's been the victim of racial profiling a number of times. The most recent occasion, she says, was a couple of months ago when she was pulled over while driving with her husband in downtown Portland.

Trejo and her husband lived in Chicago before they came to Portland, and one of the police officers became suspicious, she says, when her husband produced an out-of-state license.

"And he says, 'Oh, you're from Chicago, why you moving from there to Portland?' And I don't answer, and my husband too - we're looking at each other. I think this is personal, we don't have to share the reason why we moved to Portland." Trejo says the policeman told her she had done nothing wrong but he was on the lookout for suspicious-looking people.

Trejo was one of 18 Maine residents giving testimony in front of a panel -- including a representative from the U.S. Attorney General's Office -- at a hearing on Saturday at the Portland Public Library designed to highlight incidences of racial profiling in the state.

"Racial profiling is when law enforcement stop, question, detain or arrest an individual based solely on their race, ethnicity or perceived national origin," said Brianna Twofoot, the field director with the Maine Civil Liberties Union, which, along with the NAACP, helped organize the event.

"We're talking specifically about perception, not about actuals. So, for example, I maybe look Asian to some people, I maybe look Mexican-American, which I am," Twofoot said. "It's what the perception of the law enforcement person is who's stopped the individual."

"I felt it was not right for me to be stopped by the cops," said Sudanese refugee Rodents Biachu. Biachu was stopped in the street by the police one night last December in Portland's west end. "They just came out from the car and then approached me, and they asked me, 'Do you live around here?' And I say 'yes.' They say, 'Do you know some guys who break people's cars' mirrors'? I say 'no.'"

Biachu, who was an accountant in Sudan, is studying part-time to improve his English and learn computer skills. The police became suspicious, he says, when he explained that he was heading home from work to study for a test. "The question the cops asked me, 'Why am I working at night?' And then, 'Why am I going to do my homework at night?' That was not good to me, because that was not a question that I'm supposed to answer to him."

"We do have a policy regarding racial profiling, our officers are expected to abide by that policy," says Maine State Police Chief, Colonel Patrick Fleming. "If we get a complaint, we have an internal affairs division that looks into those complaints. So it is something that we've been aware of, and our officers are aware of, and they are expected to abide by the policy and make the stops based on the provisions of the law and not on skin color."

Fleming is one of several law enforcement officials who sit on a legislative advisory committee charged with assessing whether racial profiling -- or bias-based profiling, as it's described -- is a problem in Maine. He says the panel, which is next due to meet on July 9th, is currently reviewing new data -- based largely on traffic stops -- being collected across the state.

"There are statistics that are being gathered in some of the cities in Maine already," Col. Fleming says. "The city of Westbrook is looking at that, I believe Lewiston, Auburn, Portland. In trying to make those determinations, that's part of what our process is going to be, is looking at some of the data that's been collected and seeing what we can glean from that."

The recent hearing in Portland however is to push for reform at the federal, rather than the state, level. The MCLU's Brianna Twofoot says it's the third of six events being held across the country in support of a bill proposed by Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Detroit.

"This event is part of a national campaign to get the 'End Racial Profiling Act' introduced and passed. The "End Racial Profiling Act would ban racial profiling and religious profiling by law enforcement," Twofoot says.

For Sudanese immigrant Rodents Biachu, the experience of being racially profiled has not soured his view of the police.

Tom Porter: "Are you now less inclined to trust the police, or to call them if you feel you need help? What's your view of the police?"

Rodents Biachu: "No. I'm not suspicious of the police, they are my friends too, I talk to them, I know many of them."

He does feel however that some law enforcers need to be more in tune with the cultural sensitivities of Maine's increasingly diverse population.