South Coast ICE sweep sparks anger from congressman, mayor
FALL RIVER — After three days of a federal immigration enforcement surge on the South Coast of Massachusetts, U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District, gathered with a Fall River priest, the city’s mayor and a nonprofit to discuss what they called a wave of mass arrests targeting local immigrant families.
“This (Trump) administration and its paramilitary arm in ICE are trying to make our neighbors feel afraid,” Auchincloss said. He spoke at Fall River City Hall alongside Mayor Paul Coogan, Immigrants’ Assistance Center President Helena DaSilva Hughes and Rev. Richard Wilson of the Fall River Diocese.
Auchincloss said the federal immigration enforcement operations on the South Coast over the past three days are an example of “mass arrests and dragnet operations that are not targeted towards individuals who are a threat to public safety.”
Rather, DaSilva Hughes said “the number one” commonality between the roughly 30 people detained over the past several days in Fall River, Dartmouth and New Bedford is that the majority are asylum seekers with applications pending. Other similarities are that most were “detained in the morning on their way to work” and that some have minor traffic violations on their records, she said.
Mayor Coogan said there may have been at least two Fall River students who were caught up in the detainments over the past three days, while Wilson said family members have confirmed three of his parishioners from St. Mary’s Cathedral were detained — two on Monday and a third Wednesday.
The idea that students were picked up was extremely troubling to Coogan, who said he had “no problem with dangerous cartel members, drug dealers, violent criminals being taken out of the city of Fall River by ICE.”
“But that’s about where I’m going to draw the line,” Coogan said. While Wilson said he’d spoken with one of his parishioners who was detained, who told him he didn’t blame the immigration officers and would “‘entrust myself to God’s mercy,’” Coogan and Auchincloss were “angry” about the arrests.
“I feel a deep sense of anger against the way that ICE is operating,” Auchincloss said.
“Their recruitment, their training, and their operations are all falling below the bar that Americans should expect from uniformed law enforcement .... (Americans) want to see an immigration policy that deports individuals who are a threat to public safety,” he continued.
“They want to see an immigration policy that does not harass or intimidate individuals who are here in the United States — working, building community, paying taxes and raising families,” Auchincloss said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) declined to comment on the New Bedford operation to MassLive on Tuesday and stated, “(The Department of Homeland Security) DHS does not discuss ongoing or future operations.”
The ICE operation on the South Shore began on Monday morning, roughly around 7 a.m., according to the habeas corpus petition filed for one of the near-30 people detained across New Bedford, Dartmouth and Fall River this week.
Since that time and as of Wednesday at 4 p.m., Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI) attorney Heather Arroyo confirmed ICE detained at least 29 people in its operation so far — all of whom had legally filed, by that time, to challenge their unlawful detentions through MLRI or the Mass Deportation Defense (MADD).
However, both Arroyo and Todd Pomerleau of MADD said their respective organizations had not yet been able to reach a single client by phone as of Wednesday evening, nor reliably locate many clients in the Online Detainee Locator System on the ICE website.
The South Shore ICE operations this past week have not been confined to one workplace or a single address, according to Arroyo, but unfolded in everyday public spaces across the region. There were more than 10 vehicles circulating through New Bedford’s neighborhoods on Monday morning, she said, while agents also stopped people at gas stations, in grocery store parking lots and on neighborhood streets.
By later Monday and into Tuesday and Wednesday, Arroyo said similar detainments were being reported in Fall River and Dartmouth as well, as agents “were just all over the neighborhood” picking people up off the streets.
The attorneys say this operation so far has been an “escalation” designed to take people at random and is meant to instill terror.
“This type of operation is meant to cause fear. It’s meant to be coercive,” Arroyo said, arguing that “nothing we’re seeing suggests this is targeted in any way other than a racial profiling operation” against people who were “just living their lives.”
Arroyo said that agents were putting people behind bars “without any justification,” any indication that ICE had assessed the detainees’ criminal histories or if they posed a danger. She called the impact on families “really devastating to these communities and really horrific,” especially based on the communication MLRI has had with the people’s loved ones who are now left behind — and the little answers they’ve been left with days later.
By: Irene Rotondo
Source: MassLive