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BURLINGTON — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton said conditions have improved at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office since he last visited in June but they are still substandard and detainees still do not have mats to sleep on.
Moulton, a Democrat from Salem, toured the facility Monday morning as part of an effort to perform oversight of the detention facility there. A staffer for Moulton said the tour was arranged about a month in advance with ICE.
The facility has been the site of protests for 33 weeks after reports of poor conditions at the facility. New Bedford area residents who have spent time there since the start of the mass deportation campaign have reported frigid temperatures, no beds, poor quality food, and no privacy or shower access. One woman reported being on her period and having to share three sanitary pads among 19 women.
“Yes, the conditions are better,” he added. “But do I just trust that? No, of course not.”
“The practices that we’ve witnessed here in Burlington do not meet the standards that we would like to see,” he told a group of reporters after his tour. “But they are far better than what we have seen in other facilities in other places that we have seen.”
Moulton expressed concern about the lack of adequate bedding at the facility. He added that he requested sleeping mats for detainees during his previous visit in June and detainees still had none.
“There’s no excuse,” he said, “that there were no sleeping mats from June until now.”
He said that there were 10 times more detainees at the facility during his visit in June. He added that because the facility was not intended to hold detainees overnight, there is no federal requirement that beds be provided though he continues to pressure ICE to do so.
Among the most pressing issues was the amount of time detainees spend at the facility. ICE has previously stated that it was meant to hold detainees for hours, not days as has been reported in cases such as Yury Melissa Aguiriano Romero, a New Bedford-mother who spent 11 days at the facility before being transferred to Vermont. ICE held Marcelos Gomes Da Silva, a Milford teen picked up on his way to volleyball practice in May, for six days at the facility. Da Silva’s detention prompted Moulton’s first visit, alongside U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss.
“It does seem that they are moving people through here more quickly,” he said, adding that he requested data on stay durations and ICE said it would provide that. “The consequence of that is that they don’t have as much time for lawyers to intervene in their cases.”
Moulton said that though stays were shorter than earlier this year, that often meant that detainees were removed to other jurisdictions, away from friends, family, and legal help. Among such cases is Pascual Cuin González, a New Bedford asylee from Guatemala whom ICE briefly held at the facility over the summer before moving him to the Buffalo Service Processing Center in Batavia, New York. ICE released him, a week after his arrest, from the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana.
ICE detained another man, 18-year old Luís David Ajtzac Osório, after a raid in Fairhaven on Sept. 19. He was on a plane at Hanscom Air Force Base likely headed to Batavia that same day when agents removed him from the flight due to a stay issued by a judge in U.S. District Court Massachusetts related to a habeas corpus petition.
“We want to give people adequate access to attorneys,” Moulton said.
Moulton did not go so far as to call for the closure of the ICE facility, arguing that keeping detainees in Massachusetts at least enables oversight to ensure due process protections.
“None of us here are going to advocate for a new facility in Massachusetts,” Moulton told reporters and dozens of demonstrators. “I’d much rather see that if people have to get detained, they get access to Massachusetts lawyers.”
“I don’t want ICE to move this facility to a site in northern New England.”
He said he also asked ICE officials questions about the agency’s aggressive tactics since the beginning of the mass deportation campaign. During the news conference, he referred to U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s use of a Penske rental truck to transport agents to an operation at a Los Angeles-area Home Depot in August. He also criticized ICE for detaining people when they attend district court and immigration court dates.
“There is definitely conflict amongst agencies that is not being managed well by the current administration,” he said.
ICE officials did not respond to two emails sent by The Light seeking comment.
Warren and Markey factor
Moulton announced his plans to tour the field office on Nov. 21 and invited U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey to accompany him on his visit. Neither did.
“When it comes to ICE, elected officials should work together to demand transparency and accountability from the Trump Administration, and to ensure that the law is being followed and detainees are being treated humanely,” Moulton said in the news release announcing the visit.
“We have seen the excessive use of force and inhumane treatment by ICE personnel in Massachusetts and around the country, and want to ensure that it does not happen moving forward.”
Spokespeople for Warren and Markey said they have been actively engaged in oversight of the facility. Both signed a letter in June along with the rest of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, expressing their concerns.
Warren expressed skepticism at ICE’s response to her inquiries.
“ICE’s responses are insufficient and don’t match the reality on the ground,” she said in an email. “The reports coming out of ICE field offices continue to be deeply concerning.”
The invitation to Markey was notable, as Moulton is running to unseat the two-term incumbent in next year’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.
Markey joined a group of protesters outside the ICE facility last Wednesday. A spokesperson for Markey told The Light that the senator had already arranged that visit before Moulton extended the invitation.
“I stood with community leaders at the ICE facility in Burlington today to say: No family should fear separation,” Markey said in a post to his Facebook page. “No refugee should be stranded. No human being should be denied dignity. The Trump administration has broken our promise of justice and we must repair it.”
An activist wrote on Facebook that she asked Markey to tour the Burlington facility without notice and said he agreed to do so “soon.” She also said that the senator’s staffers told her they would not notify the press of such a visit beforehand.
Though congressmen were previously permitted to visit facilities without notice, ICE changed its policy in June to require 72 hours notice, despite a federal law requiring only 24 hours before a visit. The change occurred shortly after Moulton’s and Auchincloss’ visit to the facility. A representative for Moulton’s office told The Light in August that they only provided 45 minutes’ notice before that visit.
Moulton said he intends to visit the facility again and continue to hold the agency accountable to ensure transparency.
“We need to continue this exact sort of pressure,” he said. “I’m going to keep coming on these oversight visits.”
Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
“The practices that we’ve witnessed here in Burlington do not meet the standards that we would like to see,” he told a group of reporters after his tour. “But they are far better than what we have seen in other facilities in other places that we have seen.”
Cruel and unusual punishment violates the US constitutional protection for the criminally-charged. Imprisoned convicts get a bed.
No “standards” are too low for the racially distinct people who are forcibly tied and thrown in a van, caged, denied hygiene, food and a lawyer, shipped to hinterlands, and denied fair determination of legal residency.
Immigration status is a civil, not criminal violation. Yet they sleep on concrete. There is no justice.
Rep Moulton fails elected duty when claiming that Burlington’s basement detention conditions are not as bad as they could be.
We expect leaders to assess human rights abuse, charge it as a crime, and act in accordance with their responsibilities for oversight of federal law, checking of executive overreach, and halting inhumane operations at federal facilities.
Jmczahill,
You’re wrong, people who enter America by crossing U.S. borders are violating U.S. Federal Immigration laws, and that’s not a civil offense, that’s a criminal offense.
There’s a process for seeking asylum in America, and another for applying for permission to migrate from other nations to the United States, and it’s against federal immigration laws to enter America without first being granted that permission, if it wasn’t illegal, why would anyone live in the shadows, and fear deportation if it was simply a civil offense?
You should read the U.S. Immigration laws before telling people it’s not a criminal offense.
If Moulton, Markey, and Warren are so concerned about following the law, they should have said so when the majority of Americans were extremely opposed to open borders, and Democrats should have protested against illegal immigrants from every corner of the earth entering America without following U. S. Immigration Laws!
Also, if the illegal immigrants, and their family & friends are concerned about the conditions at ICE detention facilities, then they should get together with their fellow illegal immigrants, and arrange the “Caravans of Thousands” to begin walking back to Central America through Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, etc., I’m sure they can all be back at home in time for Christmas, and 2026, that would be the perfect gift to the American tax payers that have watched their hard earned income wasted on illegal immigrants who have no right to be in America with first requesting, then being granted asylum, just as the federal immigration laws require.
Everyone should follow every law, even the American Citizens can’t choose which laws to abide to, or ignore.
Are you OK with what ICE is doing now?
What about Bush…
How much have illegals cost you?
.1% of your annual federal income taxes paid?
New Bedford citizen violent criminals?
Whataboutism…