BOSTON (AP) — Immigrants are being detained while going to work, outside courthouses, and at store parking lots in Metro Boston as President Donald Trump targets so-called sanctuary cities in his effort to ramp up immigration enforcement.
As families hole up in homes — afraid to leave and risk detainment — advocates are reporting an increased presence of unmarked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles sitting in parking lots and other public areas throughout immigrant communities, where agents appeared to target work vans. One man captured a video of three landscapers who were working on the Saugus Town Hall property being arrested after agents smashed their truck window.
Just north of Boston, the city of Everett canceled its annual Hispanic Heritage Month festival after its mayor said it wouldn’t be right to “hold a celebration at a time when community members may not feel safe attending.”
The actions have been praised by public officials like New Hampshire Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who signed legislation this year banning sanctuary city policies in her state, vowing not to let New Hampshire “go the way of Massachusetts.” ICE this summer began utilizing a New Hampshire airport about an hour from Boston to transport New England detainees.
However, others argue that ICE’s presence in Massachusetts is doing more harm than good.
“This is really increasing the fear in communities, which is already incredibly high,” said Elizabeth Sweet, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.
Trump aims at so-called ‘sanctuaries’
Cities like Boston and Chicago — where Mayor Brandon Johnson has also condemned the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown, calling it an example of “tyranny” — have become targets for enforcement in recent days. Trump also threatened to potentially deploy the National Guard to Chicago, though he had wavered on a military deployment last week.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Sept. 4 filed a lawsuit against Mayor Michelle Wu, the city of Boston and its police department over its sanctuary city policies, claiming they’re interfering with immigration enforcement. In response, Wu accused Trump of “attacking cities to hide his administration’s failures.”
Now, ICE has launched an operation it called “Patriot 2.0″ on the heels of a May crackdown where nearly 1,500 immigrants were detained in Massachusetts. Its latest operation came days before a preliminary mayoral election, where incumbent Wu won easily. The mayor has become a frequent target over her defense of the city and its so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local police and federal immigration agents.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the Boston surge would focus on “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens” living in Massachusetts.
“Sanctuary policies like those pushed by Mayor Wu not only attract and harbor criminals but protect them at the peril of law-abiding American citizens,” she said in a press release early last week, which detailed the arrest of seven individuals by ICE, including a 38-year-old man from Guatemala who had previously been arrested on assault-related charges.
The agency did not respond to requests from The Associated Press about the number of immigrants detained since “Patriot 2.0” began.
Detainees housed in facilities across New England
ICE has contracts to detain people at multiple correctional facilities across New England, including county jails as well as the federal prison in Berlin, New Hampshire, and a publicly-owned, privately operated prison in Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Volunteers monitoring flights carrying detainees from New Hampshire’s Portsmouth International Airport at Pease have documented the transfer of more than 300 individuals since early August, with at least five flights per week transferring people from New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts. All of the detainees have been in shackles, said David Holt, who has been organizing regular protests at Pease.
Protesters gathered at venues like the ICE office in Burlington, where three participants were arrested on trespassing charges.
Families in hiding as more ICE sightings reported
Luce, the Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts, staffed its hotline with interpreters who speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, and Haitian Creole to collect information about ICE sightings. The organization put out a call for volunteers who speak languages like Cape Verdean Kriolu, Nepali and Vietnamese to help manage the influx.
Kevin Lam, co-executive director with the Asian American Resource Workshop, a community group that works on immigration and other issues, said they have seen a “spike” in ICE activity, including five Vietnamese residents from a Boston neighborhood who were detained last week.
He and other advocates said many immigrants have expressed fear about everyday tasks like picking up their kids at school and riding on public transportation. However, he said many are still attending work, with some at risk for detention who are also the primary caretakers of their families.
“Many of them are like, ‘Yeah, it is a risk every day when I step out, but I need to work to be able to provide for my family,’” he said.
Asylum-seekers and other legal immigrants targeted
Republican Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said she is “100% supportive” of ICE’s latest operation in the state and that her office will not hesitate to prosecute immigrants without legal status who commit crimes. Noncriminals have also been swept up in raids that ICE calls “collateral arrests.”
“We stand ready to charge individuals who violate all federal laws, including those who enter our country without authorization after being deported and those who assault federal law enforcement officers or impede or interfere with federal officers doing their jobs,” she said in a statement to the AP.
Advocates like Lam pushed back on claims that ICE agents are only targeting criminals, saying that with fewer protections for asylum-seekers and others who are here legally, the strategy seems to be going well beyond “bad immigrants” with records.
Alexandra Peredo Carroll, director of legal Education and advocacy at the Boston-based Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice, said the Trump administration is “trying to fit folks into this narrative of being illegal or having broken the law, when in fact, many of these are individuals who are actually going through the legal process.”
“I think you’re going to see more and more how families are going to be torn apart, how individuals with no criminal history, with pending forms of relief, pending applications are just going to be rounded up,” she said.
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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.
