The guy helping to ‘bring hell' to Boston? He's from Boston.
Over the past weeks, many Americans have taken to the streets to protest the deportation of coworkers, family, schoolmates, and neighbors — and in some cases to protest the existence of ICE. At the same time,
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For Lyons, the mission remains simple: enforce immigration law.
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While criminals are the priority, 'everything's on the table,' he told me in a conference room at ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C., this week. And it appears he means it. From
The agency is acting more broadly than it did under President Joe Biden, who banned collateral arrests — detaining illegal immigrants who were found while in pursuit of migrants with criminal records. 'If more agencies had just turned people over in a confined setting [law enforcement custody], we wouldn't be out in the community. We're going to bump into more people. We can't walk away from them,' Lyons said. That was the same justification ICE used last month when its agents
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Trump officials have zeroed in on progressive-led places like Boston and Massachusetts in an effort that partially feels like political retribution for sanctuary policies. The president's border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to
But Lyons, who worked in immigration enforcement in Boston for four years, sees the pressure less as political, and more as self-inflicted.
Massachusetts often releases immigrants charged or convicted with serious crimes instead of handing them over to ICE, authorities often
But that isn't Lyons' only gripe. 'Lunn just says you can't hold anybody on our detainers,' he said. 'But that doesn't mean the Mass. State Police can't pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, we got this guy on the side of the road.''
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He claimed that some of the state's political leaders obstruct this cooperation. But sometimes police unofficially give ICE their support. He gave an example from Joint Base Cape Cod, which served as a temporary migrant shelter. Lyons said that a State Police official claimed they found a 'guy that's wanted for murder in Venezuela,' but that they weren't allowed to turn him over to ICE. But a law enforcement official told him: 'If you magically show up at the front gate, we'll give him to you.'
Other local police departments have quietly reached out for help, he says, leaving ICE to take the heat when they detain people. That is what Lyons told me happened during
Martha's Vineyard has six different police departments, and doesn't have one police chief. The county sheriff Robert Ogden told me that he didn't have any prior knowledge of the recent operation. I reached out to Lyons after the interview and was told that some police departments on the Vineyard 'cooperate, a few don't.'
The ability to cooperate with local officials to track down criminals is personal for Lyons. He says he lost a family member some years back to a fentanyl overdose. When investigators tried to pinpoint the source, it was 'tracked to a Dominican drug dealer that had been previously deported from my office,' he said.
'Night after night after night, Lawrence PD, Lowell PD, Methuen, Boston, have [custody of] these fentanyl dealers, three or four times,' Lyons contends, and many of them have reentered the country after deportation.
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Can this system that both parties claim to hate be fixed? Any ICE director 'would say we are totally open to congressional rewrites of the law,' he said, and that streamlining would make it easier to focus on criminals. Too many Biden-era migrants were promised a chance at asylum – which he called a 'false hope' because many are in a state of legal limbo. A better system would allow some migrants to apply for asylum from their home country rather than making the dangerous trek to the US, then waiting years in immigration court.
But until reform comes, Lyons is sticking to the law. He gave an example from his time as a police officer in Florida: Stopping a dad on the way to work with a busted taillight only to find he also had a warrant on him for being delinquent on child support payments. 'You feel bad for that person, but it's still a law,' he told me. 'That's kind of the predicament I'm in.'
Carine Hajjar is a Globe Opinion writer. She can be reached at
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