Since President Donald Trump began his second term in office, New Bedford’s immigrant community has been transformed.
The first nine months of mass deportations were marked by sudden and violent raids that drew national and international attention. Over time, enforcement became more targeted, moving largely out of public view.
Federal authorities have arrested at least 60 immigrants living or working in the New Bedford area. The Light has confirmed the apprehension of 53 through local sources, court records, and area and federal law enforcement. Some were detained during large-scale actions. Others were arrested individually, or at check-ins for immigration appointments.
Of those individuals, nine have been confirmed released. Some are awaiting decisions in immigration court, while others were released under supervision. Twelve detainees have since been deported from the United States.
Violent raids
People felt the mass deportation campaign before it hit New Bedford. Shortly after the 2024 election, advocates, lawyers, and some public officials urged their community to brace for impact. Businesses on Acushnet Avenue began to feel the pinch before the first street arrest happened.
U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s hammer fell upon New Bedford on March 11, when agents descended on the Minit-Man Car Wash and detained three Guatemalan men.
On March 21, ICE agents detained two Guatemalan men when they used a battering ram to enter their home on Viall Street. Teenagers present at the home said agents did not present warrants for entry. The raid left a 19-year old as household head. The action spurred 200 residents to demonstrate outside City Hall.
On April 14, Marilú Domingo Ortiz used her cellphone to record a federal agent as he smashed the car window when agents arrested her husband, Juan Francisco Méndez. The tape led to an international outcry and prompted declamation from U.S. Rep. Bill Keating. After more than two months in detention, ICE released Méndez on bond.
Dramatic street raids continued. Operation Patriot in May and Operation Patriot 2.0 arrested thousands of immigrants statewide, largely with no criminal convictions. In New Bedford, the vast majority of immigrants detained had no violent criminal convictions.
The overwhelming majority of those detained locally have been Indigenous men from Guatemala. The gender disparities led some advocates to speculate that it may point to a strategy of removing breadwinners to pressure their families to leave.
On June 8, ICE detained Emerson Garcia DosSantos as he drove his car in Fall River, leaving his U.S. citizen wife, Erika Hartman DosSantos, to fight brain cancer alone. DHS later deported Garcia DosSantos to his native Brazil. The couple is arranging for Hartman DosSantos to relocate to Brazil.
In the coming months, tactics evolved. The last confirmed street operation took place in Fairhaven on Sept. 19, when agents took three Guatemalan men into custody. Among them was Luís David Ajtzac Osório, an 18-year old with special immigrant juvenile status and a legal work permit.
Tactics have moved beyond street arrests. In July, Market Basket told 47 workers to leave their New Bedford store unless they could show proof of legal work authorization.
That demonstrated New Bedford’s economic dependence on immigrants as fear pushed people to leave their jobs, and often enough, the area. After months of terror, some businesses along Acushnet Avenue reported drops in sales as high as 50%.
The number of immigrant students enrolled in New Bedford Public Schools also dropped by 6% from last year, and a further 13% since September.
Bishop Edgar Moreira da Cunha, the prelate of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River, leads New Bedford’s large Catholic community. He spoke with The Light on the impact of ICE raids on church attendance.
“The United States is shooting themselves in the foot because they are doing harm to themselves by the things that they are doing,” da Cunha told The Light.
From the streets to the courts
ICE agents’ presence on the streets of New Bedford shrank significantly by the fall as federal operations shifted to other parts of the country. In Massachusetts, while street arrests have continued, ICE’s gaze fell upon district courts and immigration check-ins at the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program office in Framingham, or for check-ins at the ICE Field Office in Burlington.
Data collected by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Light show that over 400 arrests in Massachusetts from January to mid-October 2025 occurred across 44 courts statewide.
In Bristol County, emails obtained by The Light show routine exchanges between the sheriff’s office and ICE, including booking logs, court dates, and release times. At the Dartmouth House of Correction, jail officials often coordinated directly with ICE, sharing information that has helped facilitate immigration arrests.
However, sheriffs are limited in how much they can assist ICE, even when detainers are issued. A 2017 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court bars sheriffs from holding someone solely on an ICE detainer once they are cleared for release, a ruling that has led to friction with federal agents.
That tension culminated in May, when the Department of Homeland Security published a list of “sanctuary jurisdictions,” accusing them of obstructing immigration enforcement. Nearly every county in Massachusetts appeared on the list, a move the president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, Kieran Donahue, criticized as arbitrary and damaging to cooperation between law enforcement and the White House.
In April, Mayor Jon Mitchell criticized ICE over a lack of transparency around Méndez’s arrest.
Communication has been inconsistent with the New Bedford Police Department as well, Police Chief Jason Thody told The Light in October. Most of the time, he said, officers learn of immigration arrests through news reports or social media.
In response to increased immigration enforcement activity and “some community pushback,” Thody issued interim guidance outlining how officers should interact with ICE when agents conduct operations in the city.
Legal developments
Enforcement continues to reflect massive changes in policy. And it has rippled into the court systems, where advocates and lawyers say many of those policies violate civil and due process rights.
Many complaints revolve around the speed at which those detained are processed and transferred outside Massachusetts. ICE detained Pascual Cuin González, a Guatemalan asylee in New Bedford, on Sept. 12, alongside his partner, Manuela Morales González.
Over the next week, authorities transferred him between Burlington and detention facilities in New York and Louisiana before agents released him to find his way back to New Bedford.
The use of Hanscom Air Force base to swiftly fly detainees out of Massachusetts prompted a letter from Gov. Maura Healey on Dec. 15 protesting the flights from the base.
“Flying these residents out of state and away from their support systems and legal counsel — often within hours of arrest — is intentionally cruel and purposely obstructs the due process and legal representation they are owed,” Healey said.
As fears of ICE permeate communities, nonprofits across the state have noticed a sizable increase in the number of residents applying for U.S. citizenship.
But many others seeking legal status, including Ajtzac Osório, the New Bedford teenager from the Fairhaven raid, have been de-documented despite following legal processes. The same day Ajtzac Osório was arrested, U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services removed his deferred action and later terminated his work permit.
As allegations of civil rights violations increased, so have the numbers of habeas corpus petitions filed in U.S. District Court Massachusetts. As of Dec. 29, there had been 629 habeas petitions filed in the court, 432 of which remained active. The number of habeas petitions filed continued to rise after multiple Board of Immigration Appeals decisions and an ICE policy change in July resulted in blanket bond hearing denials.
That happened to Yury Melissa Aguiriano Romero, a Honduran asylum seeker and the first confirmed female detainee from New Bedford. An immigration judge denied her a bond hearing at the behest of DHS. That judge later granted her release on bond only after a U.S. District Court judge ordered a bond hearing.
In December, U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris declared that DHS had misclassified many detainees in order to deny their right to a bond hearing. She ordered DHS to allow for bond hearings to notify all current and future detainees within the jurisdiction of U.S. District Court Massachusetts and the Boston and Chelmsford immigration courts of that right in an appropriate language.
The rapidly shifting environment has taxed immigration lawyers, who find themselves overwhelmed with policy changes and people seeking legal representation.
The Massachusetts hub
The ICE Field Office in Burlington, where many are processed after arrest, has become a focal point of discussion over detention conditions. Stories of harsh treatment and possible civil and human rights violations have led to weekly protests outside the building and visits from federal lawmakers.
In August, The Light collected testimonies from immigrants in the Greater New Bedford area who had spent time in Burlington and, in some cases, other ICE facilities out of state. They described being kept in rooms with no windows for most of the day, receiving little food and water, and sometimes going days without bathing.
Others said their experiences in jails in New England, where immigrants were held with the general inmate population, felt more humane than ICE-run facilities.
Andrés De León Castro, arrested in Fairhaven in May and deported to Guatemala on July 12, said agents at Burlington told detainees they were not allowed to talk or move and left them in a freezing room without food or water.
“When we complained, they told us that’s what we deserved.”
Conditions inside the facility drew public attention after the release of Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a Milford High School student detained in May and held there for six days. His detention prompted a visit on June 5 by the U.S. Reps. Jake Auchincloss and Seth Moulton.
After his second visit in November, Moulton said at a news conference outside the facility that he saw fewer detainees than during his earlier visit, but that access to blankets remained a concern.
“It seems that they are moving people through here more quickly,” said Moulton. “The consequence of that is that they don’t have as much time to have lawyers intervene in their cases.”
Email Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org. Email Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org.
It’s real simple Ice is only doing there job, blame Joe Biden, Maura Healey, and all the Far Left Liberals that left the borders wide open and let undocumented Illegals including (Criminals, Rapists, and Child Molesters) enter our country. 100% if you are here illegally, you should be deported.