Advocates say that there are more unmarked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles parked in immigrant communities, where agents seem to be targeting work vans. This is happening as families stay inside because they are afraid to leave and risk being detained. One person filmed three landscapers who were working on the Saugus Town Hall grounds were detained after authorities broke the glass of their truck.The city of Everett, which is just north of Boston, called off its annual Hispanic Heritage Month event after its mayor said it wouldn't be proper to "hold a celebration at a time when community members may not feel safe attending."
Public authorities, including New Hampshire Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who signed a law last year making sanctuary city practices illegal in her state, have welcomed the moves. She promised not to let New Hampshire "go the way of Massachusetts." ICE started using an airfield in New Hampshire this summer to move detainees from New England. The airport is roughly an hour from Boston.
Elizabeth Sweet, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, stated, "This is really making people in communities more afraid, which is already very high."
Trump is going for what he calls "sanctuaries."
In the last few days, cities like Boston and Chicago have been targeted for enforcement. Mayor Brandon Johnson has also spoken out against the Trump administration's current immigration crackdown, calling it an example of "tyranny." Trump also said he would send the National Guard to Chicago, even though he had changed his mind about sending troops there last week.
On September 4, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Mayor Michelle Wu, the city of Boston, and its police department over its sanctuary city policies, saying they make it harder to enforce immigration laws. Wu said that Trump was "attacking cities to hide his administration's failures" in reaction.
ICE has started an operation codenamed "Patriot 2.0" after a sweep in May that resulted to the detention of almost 1,500 immigrants in Massachusetts. Its most recent operation took place only days before a preliminary mayoral election, which Wu won comfortably. People often attack the mayor for defending the city and its so-called "sanctuary policies," which make it harder for local police and federal immigration authorities to work together.
Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, warned that the Boston surge will 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 Associated Press asked the agency how many immigrants had been held since "Patriot 2.0" began, but they did not answer.
Detainees are kept in places all around New England.
ICE has contracts to hold prisoners in many correctional institutions in New England. These include county prisons, the federal prison in Berlin, New Hampshire, and a publicly-owned, privately-run prison in Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Since early August, volunteers who have been watching aircraft taking prisoners from New Hampshire's Portsmouth International Airport at Pease have recorded the transfer of more over 300 persons. There are at least five flights each week that take inmates from New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts. David Holt, who has been organizing frequent protests at Pease, stated that all of the inmates have been in chains.
More ICE sightings have been reported, so families are hiding.
To get information regarding ICE sightings, Luce, the Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts, hired translators who speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, and Haitian Creole to operate on its hotline. The group asked for volunteers who know languages like Cape Verdean Kriolu, Nepali, and Vietnamese to aid with the flow of people.
Kevin Lam, who is the co-executive director of the Asian American Resource Workshop, a community group that focuses on immigration and other problems, said that ICE action has "spiked." For example, last week, five Vietnamese people from a Boston area were taken into custody.
He and other supporters noted that a lot of immigrants are scared to do things like pick up their kids from school and ride public transportation. But he stated that many are still going to work, and some are even ready to risk getting arrested because they are the main breadwinners for their families.
He stated, "A lot of them say, 'Yes, it's a risk every day when I go out, but I have to work to support my family.'"
Asylum seekers and other lawful immigrants are being targeted
Leah Foley, the Republican U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, said she is "100% supportive" of ICE's new operation in the state. She also added that her office will not hesitate to charge immigrants who break the law without legal status. ICE terms arrests of people who aren't criminals "collateral arrests."
She told the AP, "We are ready to charge people who break any federal law, including those who come to our country without permission after being deported and those who attack federal law enforcement officers or get in the way of them doing their jobs."
Lam and other advocates pushed back on claims that ICE officers are solely going for criminals. They said that the tactic seemed to be stretching much beyond "bad immigrants" with records, as asylum seekers and other people who are here lawfully have less rights.
Alexandra Peredo Carroll, director of legal education and advocacy at the Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice in Boston, said, "The Trump administration is trying to fit people into this story of being illegal or having broken the law, when in fact, many of these people 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 people with no criminal history and pending forms of relief and applications are just going to be rounded up," she added.