ICE is targeting Massachusetts

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 12 episode of the 'Say More' podcast.
Shirley Leung:
I'm Shirley Leung. Welcome to 'Say More.'
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is making itself known in Massachusetts.
Federal immigration officials say they've arrested nearly 1,500 people over the last month. They're calling it 'Operation Patriot.'
ICE officers have taken people off the streets, on their way to school, and from courthouses. They've made it clear that the commonwealth is a target.
Michael J. Krol
:
It should be no secret by now that you will continue to see all of our special agents and officers in your communities conducting daily enforcement actions 24/7. I caution those who try to impede or obstruct operations.
I'm joined today by two Boston Globe journalists who have been covering the fallout from Trump's deportation policies.
Marcela Garcia is a columnist for Globe Opinion. She's been writing about immigrant communities in and around Boston for two decades. Samantha Gross covers state politics for the globe and has covered the immigration raids and responses in Massachusetts.
Leung:
Samantha, what does it mean for Massachusetts to be targeted by ICE? What does that look like in practice?
Samantha Gross:
I think in the last few months since this operation has really picked up in Massachusetts, we've seen a presence of federal immigration officials in unmarked cars, in plainclothes showing up in neighborhoods, communities, and in courthouses.
And we're seeing communities start to respond.
It's been going on over the last few months, but in the last few weeks, as some of these really high profile arrests have happened, I think it's really top of mind for a lot of people in Massachusetts. We're seeing that every day.
Leung:
But before, would people normally see ICE walking around?
Gross:
No, and I think that's really been a big talking point among local elected officials and leaders to figure out how to communicate to their communities about what their rights are.
Especially in communities with high immigrant populations and workplaces that employ many immigrants, they are kind of on edge.
It's a newer phenomenon since the Trump administration has made this directive to really ramp up its arrests and promise to deport hundreds of thousands of people.
Leung:
Marcela, you've written about Massachusetts immigrant communities for years.
How are people feeling right now? What are you hearing?
Marcela Garcia:
People are very, very afraid.
Like Samantha said, communities are on edge and I see a lot of documenting on social media of ICE activity. Facebook and WhatsApp groups have become sort of lifelines for people to know where ICE is going and it really is a day-to-day thing.
ICE is out there trying to arrest people. We saw them at the courthouses.
So naturally, people are very scared. They don't want to leave their homes. Yeah, people are very afraid.
Leung:
And one of the biggest stories of the last week was the detention of Marcelo Gomes da Silva.
He was a Milford High School student who was taken by ICE on his way to volleyball practice. Marcelo was released last week, and here he is:
Marcelo Gomes da Silva (
):
I don't wanna cry, but I wanna say that that place is not good. It's not good. Ever since I got here, they had me in handcuffs. They put me downstairs and I was in a room with a bunch of 35-year-old men. And those rooms were small compared to the size of how many men were there, there were like 40 men in there. We would barely get any attention from the people there. It would be really hard. I haven't showered in six days. I haven't done anything.
Leung:
This 18-year-old had no criminal record and ICE admitted they weren't even looking for him. They were looking for his father and they wanted to arrest his father instead. So what does this situation tell us about ICE's tactics?
Marcela:
They're just basically grabbing anyone they can at this point.
We've seen the Trump administration basically being frustrated at the pace of arrest.
Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, lashed out recently in a meeting to top ICE officials. He was very frustrated and he threatened to fire people, to fire these officers, if the numbers didn't go up.
In that meeting, I think he reportedly was questioning ICE, signaling that workplace rates are about to ramp up. And that's what we've seen in recent days with what has been happening in Los Angeles. The escalation there with clashes and protests, and so forth.
So I think people here, locally, have also been bracing for that situation, for that next phase of ICE knocking on businesses or hanging out at parking lots of Home Depot or Lowe's, and going to construction sites.
And so I think that's a legitimate fear that people have right now as, again, the Trump administration amps up the pressure to get the numbers that they want. So I think that is sort of the next frontier, if you will.
Leung:
Samantha, many of these arrests happen without a warrant. And so, what do you make of this? Why is that happening and how can that happen?
Gross:
These arrests are a federal level thing. They're not arrests like you would see from local law enforcement where someone is charged and arrested and goes through that same process.
The Trump administration has also expanded the use of expedited removal, which basically means picking people up without a court hearing in immigration cases.
Like Marcela mentioned, I think this is all kind of leading to the same point of the administration trying to move as quickly as possible to detain as many people as possible.
What that leads to is a lack of understanding of where and when these are happening. And that is troubling for a lot of communities because people don't even really know when maybe their loved ones are picked up until much later because there's not the same accountability, there's not the same reporting
Leung:
Marcela, the Trump administration has been saying, 'We're only arresting people with criminal records.' Is that what's happening?
Garcia:
No, no. Absolutely not. They have gone after people with criminal records, obviously, that's sort of like the 'lowest hanging fruit,' if you will.
But by and large, they are grabbing the so-called collateral damage or collateral arrest. The case of Marcelo Gomes is the perfect example, right?
He was a collateral arrest. They're going after anyone basically who cannot prove that they have a legal status here and even those who are on their way to get a legal status.
I was speaking to a lawyer recently who told me that they're even going after juveniles that have had ongoing cases with special immigrant visas, it's a status that eventually leads to permanent residency or citizenship. Basically, youth who are doing the right thing.
And so this idea that, 'oh, we're only going after criminals,' that has completely been debunked because it's not true.
Gross:
Another thing is that the federal immigration officials who are talking about these arrests, like the 1,500 in May that they recently had a press conference about, say that many of them had certain criminal records. But the officials do not release information about who the people are that they arrested or what crimes they were charged with.
They will give some examples, but of the 1,500 we know very little about who those people are. As journalists, I think we have to be kind of careful about how we characterize the folks that they're picking up.
Leung:
In the last several weeks, we've seen ICE arrests ramping up at immigration courts. Our colleague
Marcela, you've been looking into this as well. Have arrests at these venues ever happened before like this?
Garcia:
Not really. And, it's happening all over the country, by the way. And, here too, as Giulia has documented.
I had a lawyer tell me that they had a prospective client who had an immigration court date. His case was dismissed and like Samantha was saying, they use the use of expedited removal. It's very wonky, like it's a very technical term, but it is a tool that the Trump administration is using to immediately remove people without the regular due process.
In this case, this person had his case dismissed. He thought that was good news. He comes out of the court and then he gets arrested.
But no, to answer your question, traditionally that had never happened. In fact, courts have always been deemed a sensitive location for ICE activity. These are people who are doing the 'right thing.'
That's why ICE has always been very careful with showing up at the courts because you don't want to scare people into not showing up. But that's exactly what's happening now. How are people going to go to their court date now with trust and confidence in the process?
Leung:
Governor Maura Healey was the State Attorney General during the first Trump presidency, and I remember attending her press conferences about how she was challenging Trump's Muslim travel ban and other anti-immigrant policies in court.
Samantha, how is Healey responding as governor to the actions of ICE?
Gross:
Yeah, I think for the first short while we didn't see a lot of her on this issue. It's something that has been brought up at protests and among activists, like, 'Where is the governor?'
As of recently we've seen her out front a little bit more, especially with some of the high profile arrests on Martha's Vineyard in Nantucket, the arrest of Marcelo Gomes.
On that note, she had sent a fundraising email, kind of mentioning this, shortly after he was released. And so, we're seeing a little bit more from her. But it definitely is different than when she was Attorney General and was sort of the face of this issue among Democrats nationally.
On the other hand, Attorney General Andrea Campbell has been a bit outspoken and put out a
Garcia:
Also, it looks different if you look at the Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, she's definitely used the bully pulpit a lot more than Healey has. And, I think that's where activists draw a distinction there. I feel like they're hoping or pushing Healey to be more outspoken like Wu.
And, I don't really know if that leads to a tangible, measurable good outcome for immigrants if you have the Mayor of Boston using the bully pulpit more and being outspoken, showing solidarity. But at least I feel like they feel like she's in their corner.
Leung:
This is a great segue to talk about what's happening at the city level.
Samantha, you were out on Martha's Vineyard after more than three dozen immigrants were arrested by ICE.
And you also covered this recent round table, with representative Ayanna Pressley in East Boston. It featured several women whose husbands have been detained by ICE.
So what are you seeing? Whether it's Boston or on the Vineyard, what's the response of the municipal level in response to ICE?
Gross:
I think in communities that have immigrant populations, this isn't new to them.
But people are definitely scared. At the federal level, there's not a lot they can do. Their hands are tied, that is true.
At this round table in East Boston, we heard from the Chelsea City Manager who said they sit in City Hall and see ICE officials in their cars in the City Hall parking lot looking for people. People are being pulled aside and asked for documentation or their driver's license.
So I think they're trying to kind of respond in real time and it's difficult. I know there were a number of state representatives there as well who have recently formed an immigration caucus and say that they plan to bring in Healey and people from the administration to talk about what they can do at the state level because I think a lot of people are asking.
These women who spoke were saying, 'We need an investigation into how people are being treated. Our husbands are being pulled out of their cars or taken away at work. And taken to far away places like in an ICE detention center in Louisiana and we need the governor and the attorney general to do something.'
So, I think everyone's still kind of scrambling almost to keep up. Also, just because the tactics have changed pretty dramatically from week to week.
Leung:
Marcela, you've been out to New Bedford.
Garcia:
Yeah. It's interesting because an advocate there was the one who has been telling me he's been bracing for the workplace raids.
The fishing industry there, it's obviously a huge economic driver of the region, the state, and who is working at the fishing processing plants? It's all immigrants.
We were talking about how everyone is afraid. I remember seeing a poster in one of the local stores that sells a lot of Latino products. It was just basically this group of people who had come together to offer their help.
It just said, 'If you need help buying groceries or running errands, any type of errands, text us and we'll do it for you.' It just speaks to this notion that people are afraid to leave their homes.
And the woman in this grocery store was telling me, 'Oh, it's Sunday morning by now, there will be a line here.' But it was empty.
Again, it just speaks to how people and communities are responding. They're still very much afraid.
It also speaks to something you and I have discussed before. Sanctuary cities really cannot do anything to protect you.
ICE obviously has federal authority to enforce immigration laws and so there's very little state officials can do. I know they're frustrated because people are really dealing with human rights abuses left and right, and there's so many cases that we don't know, too, like that round table that Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley organized where these women were talking about how their husbands were snatched.
These testimonies or these cases we have not heard of in the media. It just makes me wonder how many others we don't know.
Gross:
That was something that really struck me, to Marcela's point, there's so many of these things that we don't know about.
In the same way, there's kind of the misnomer about sanctuary cities, there's also a misnomer about sanctuary states.
I think Massachusetts is kind of held up at the federal level as a talking point as a sanctuary state. That isn't true.
Leung:
There's no such thing, right?
Gross:
There's no such thing.
There was this [2017] Supreme Judicial Court decision that limits how law enforcement can interact with federal immigration authorities and not take requests to detain people on federal immigration charges.
But that's not the same thing. And that is something that the Trump administration has pointed to when it talks about states like Massachusetts or California. It's not quite what it sounds like.
I also wanted to add, in East Boston when we were there, I talked to some neighbors who said they have WhatsApp groups that are doing just what Marcelo was saying, offering to walk people to school, to the store, to work, walking in groups to help people feel more safe.
On Martha's Vineyard, the same thing was happening. I was there on a Wednesday, which is the distribution day for a food bank where you usually see a lot of immigrant families come to pick up food and no one came.
They were calling for volunteers to drive groceries to people's homes.
Leung:
Samantha, you mentioned State Attorney General Andrea Campbell and how she's released some guidance to folks who fear they may be targeted by ICE, just telling the general public regarding their rights to document these events. So talk to me about this guidance.
Gross:
The guidance is actually pretty lengthy and it talks to immigrants who are fearful that they will have an interaction with ICE and what they should do and what their rights are.
But like you said, it also talks to the general public because I think there's been a lot of discussion around filming ICE, getting involved, being in close physical proximity.
There's a lot of concern that these things should be documented because when they happen without people seeing them, we really don't know a lot about what, like what happens and how people are being picked up.
It's been widely publicized. I've seen versions of it kind of printed in businesses and in pocket-sized versions.
In my neighborhood in Somerville, there's Ziploc baggies with it printed off into little pieces and taped onto light posts. So, I think that message is getting out.
I think from my understanding, the Attorney General's office is still kind of having conversations about how to message this type of thing better, in more languages around the commonwealth.
Leung:
Marcela, we're seeing the National Guard come in and crack down on mass protests in Los Angeles over ICE arrests. What do you expect to see here in Massachusetts?
Garcia:
With the caveat that obviously Boston isn't LA. The scale and the size is different.
We haven't seen any of that mass protest activity, but maybe if ICE comes to the workplace, I do think that there's going to be some activity there. Maybe rallies, maybe some protests.
But I do think that by and large, the people who are going to be out there protesting are not going to be undocumented immigrants because obviously they're afraid. It's people who are going to show up in solidarity with immigrant rights.
I just don't know that we're gonna see the mass numbers that we've seen in LA.
Leung:
And Sam, what are you watching for from a political perspective going forward?
Samantha:
I think politicians here are really grappling with what they can say and do because as we mentioned, their hands are tied when it comes to federal immigration law.
So, I'll be interested to see what this new immigration caucus kind of comes out with. There's a lot of overlap with the Black and Latino caucus on Beacon Hill, but I think they're trying to bring in more people to talk about what they can do for immigrant communities.
I'm definitely going to keep an eye on the governor and what her messaging is like since we've seen that kind of shift in the last couple weeks. And I'm also going to be looking at the attorney general to see if she ends up joining any lawsuits with other attorneys general around the country, like we saw Governor Healey do when she was attorney general during the last administration.
I'm just watching what's at play right now.
Listen to more 'Say More' episodes at
Kara Mihm of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at

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