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FAIRHAVEN — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested three Guatemalan painters on their way to work during an early morning operation Friday.
Federal agents detained Ezequiel Cos Pacheco, 31, Isaias Castro, in his 30s, and Luís David Ajtzac Osório, 18, after stopping the van they were riding to work in at around 6:30 a.m. on Middle Street. Osório has a valid work permit and Pacheco is undocumented, according to their boss, Lidia Santos. Castro’s status remains unknown.
A search at the New Bedford District Court shows no criminal records in Massachusetts for Castro, Osório, or Pacheco.
Late in the afternoon, Chief Judge Denise J. Casper issued a stay of transfer or removal for Osório after a habeas corpus petition was filed on his behalf in U.S. District Court Massachusetts, though it is unclear whether he was still in the state at the time of filing. Department of Homeland Security officials must now give 48 hours notice to the court before moving him.
Residents who witnessed the arrest said there were at least three unmarked sedans and agents wearing bulletproof vests. Workers were heading to 43 William St., just a few blocks from the site of the arrest, where they had been seen working all summer, according to residents.
A video posted to social media showed masked men with vests stamped with the letters ERO — the acronym for Enforcement and Removal Operations, the branch of ICE that conducts street arrests — standing around a vehicle with the name Lidia & Victor Jr. Painting Inc. on it.
At least two local residents said they confronted the ICE agents and questioned the arrests.
Santos, co-owner of the company alongside her husband, Victor Santiago Ixcuna, told The Light in Spanish that Ixcuna was picking men up to bring to job sites when the raid happened. She said there were eight or nine men in the van at the time and that the majority escaped. One of the men who escaped called the driver of another company van, who then called Santos, who arrived within 15 minutes of the call.
“I saw one of the agents who spoke Spanish and I just started to tell him: You should be doing this to criminals!” she recalled in Spanish.
She said she carried her 8-month-old daughter in her arms with her and at one point an agent mocked her, saying that she should get a carriage for the child.
“That’s when I started to tell him he shouldn’t be doing this to our own people,” she said. Then, an agent approached her with a can of either mace or pepper spray, she said. “I had my baby in my arms and he still threatened me like this.”
Ann Richard, a local teacher, said she was driving down Middle Street when she saw ICE agents in the road after the arrest.
“I did confront the ICE people in the street, and they started yelling at me, telling me I didn’t belong there,” said Richard. “It got very heated.”
She said that once the agents left, she and other residents called local advocates and stayed with one of the detainee’s family members.
“It’s just horrible to know that this little kid saw this happen, and people in masks taking his father,” she said.
Second round
The detention was the second for Pacheco, an undocumented man, whom agents previously took into custody during a raid at the Minit-Man Car Wash on March 11.
Adrian Ventura, executive director of the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, said the agents brought the three men to the ICE Field Office in Burlington. Around 10:30 a.m., while speaking to The Light, he received a message he found odd.
“I just got a message saying that they’ve already released Pacheco,” he said. “Now I need to go get him.
“It seems to be a new strategy of theirs,” he continued, adding that the Boston suburb is somewhat distant from New Bedford and a hassle to get to, especially without a car.
Santos said she was confused by the decision to drive him about 74 miles only to release him.
“This is not justice,” Santos said, “to take him all the way up to Burlington and just let him go. What would he do if he had no support system?”
“What are we supposed to do in this situation?” she continued. “They should be going after drug traffickers. Instead, they’re hunting honest hardworking people who are just out there trying to earn their daily bread to support themselves and their families here and in Guatemala.”
The operation was part of an uptick in raids throughout Massachusetts called Operation 2.0. The surge began in early September, with the first arrest confirmed by The Light in the Greater New Bedford area on Sept. 4, when Jose Bonilla, 58, of Everett, was stopped by ICE agents at the intersection of Roosevelt Street and Cove Road in New Bedford.
Nine area residents have been detained by ICE this month, bringing the total number of detained since Jan. 20 to more than 50, The Light has confirmed.
Richard said she and other residents were very upset. “We see it on the news, but then it’s like actually on our streets, you know, right there,” she said. “It’s just terrible. It’s a police state. That’s not what it should be.”
Kevin G. Andrade can be contacted at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org. Eleonora Bianchi can be contacted at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org.
So much for “if you’re here legally you have nothing to worry about” if they are grabbing documented people and detaining them for hours before releasing them a far way away.
I am SO SICK of seeing ICE wearing masks! Why is that being allowed?
Because you guys wear masks when you burnt down cities in 2020. It’s the same game.
I don’t understand why the ice agents wear masks and are in street clothing. If three masked individuals came after me without indication that the are law enforcement I would be inclined protect myself.
Too many illegals in the country period. They had almost 4 years to begin the process to gain residency and citizenship did they? Obviously not, they CHOSE not to pursue a legal pathway to stay instead some of their illegal alien brothers and sisters decided to commit all types of violent crime! This state spent close to one Billion dollars to house these aliens while parts of the state struggle to survive ( that is putting it lightly) which is lousy treatment of the American taxpayer ! The Healy administration is a complete failure in taking care of the taxpayer it is shameful ! This needs to stop look at the streets in New Bedford for example the city is in a complete downturn truly sad and unacceptable ! Anyone can see this !
These ice agents are doing their job period ! If their faces are covered it is because the extreme left want to identify who they are personally and most likely attempt to cause some type of harassment to them or the family ! Lady Justice is blindfolded what difference does it make ? It is the uniform that identifies them not their face leave it there !
Why is this news anymore? Go away and let the agents do what they sworn an oath to do!
They are not criminals in the sense that they rob and steal or murder. But allowing for illegal workers like this sets the table for contractors to have only one guy who is legal, and he can contract out a whole bunch of people he just brings in from friends of his back in his home country. Most of these people probably don’t stick around that long anyway and just here to make a few bucks for a year or two if that. But if you cannot see that creates an obvious precedence for contractors, and any other company, to have one legal person as the umbrella Force who brings in all the illegals at Great expense to domestic workers. If you all are so kind and worried about the poor downtroded illegals, maybe you can worry about some low-end people on parole that the local sheriff’s department says is ready for a second chance and is not a danger. I don’t know if that’s the better idea but if you trust your sheriff…
Anyway, anyone who is here illegally or hiring illegal workers at this point deserves what’s coming to them. They clearly have no social skills to read whats happening in the culture today.
What a waste of taxpayer dollars — there are plenty of hard core drug dealers that need to be pursued and these masked Gestapo-like police with their big guns and bullet-proof vests are picking off hard working laborers with no criminal record. Consider the real reason this is being done – to condition the public to accept a bullying police state as normal.