ICE arrests pick up speed in New Bedford District Court

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NEW BEDFORD — You better get downstairs fast. ICE is here and I think it’s for your client.

When Richard Harrison heard these words from a colleague on the morning of Aug. 6, the defense attorney hurried to the restricted area of New Bedford District Court where those in custody are held. Judge Teresa Lamarre had just assigned him the new client, a 52-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic, and ordered her release on personal recognizance. 

But he was too late. A man dressed in black, with a hood up, already had her in handcuffs. 

“I never got to talk to her,” Harrison told The Light. 

She was already in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE’s presence and arrests at state courts are nothing new, according to lawyers in the field. But changes to federal policies made early in President Donald J. Trump’s second term shifted who ICE prioritizes for arrest — vastly expanding the range of conditions under which those can happen — and how often ICE agents are in courthouses. 

It also comes after U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin shifted tactics from the confrontational arrests preferred by his predecessor, Kristi Noem, to more discreet arrests. Federal authorities detained 49,571 people in July, the highest single month arrest total of Trump’s second term.

“In the last 18 months, we’ve seen a pretty steady flow of courthouse arrests all over the state,” said Jennifer Klein, director of the Immigration Impact Unit at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state public defender’s office.

Court officers in New Bedford observed ICE detain eight people inside the courthouse this year through Aug. 18, according to the Massachusetts Trial Court system. Three of those arrests happened the first week of August.

In 2025, ICE detained 614 people in Massachusetts courts. 

With many federal arrests happening before a person has an opportunity to answer the charges against them in state court, advocates fear for an erosion of civil and due process rights. Many defense attorneys are now advising clients not to post bail, in an effort to stay in state jail and out of ICE custody. 

“Right now, it’s certainly quite different,” said Corinn Williams, director of the New Bedford-based Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts. “Unfortunately, ICE is short-circuiting the judicial process and due process.”

A new state law, the PROTECT Act, signed Aug. 5, includes a provision that will prohibit courthouse detentions starting Nov. 3. Some observers think ICE could challenge it. But state leaders have emphasized its intentions, and strength, throughout

“People are afraid to go to court, to testify, as victims and witnesses,” Gov. Maura Healey said at a news conference in January, where she announced her support for such a law. “This is all making us less safe.”

‘There were priorities’

The agency’s presence in courthouses is nothing new, according to Klein. ICE has had a presence in courthouses since the Homeland Security Act birthed the agency in 2003. 

“People with interaction in the criminal legal system have always been a target of every administration,” Klein said. “But the scale and the aggressiveness are significantly intensified under the Trump administration.”

Under the Biden administration, a memorandum on civil immigration enforcement actions “in or near” courthouses restricted them to national security threats, active pursuits, or “imminent risk” of death, harm, or destruction of evidence. That policy explicitly acknowledged advocates’ concerns that civil immigration arrests may “chill individuals’ access to courthouses and, as a result, impair the fair administration of justice.”

That could explain why one public defender told The Light that they rarely saw ICE in New Bedford District Court between 2021 and 2024, when they first started working there.

“I do not remember any from before last year that I heard of or saw,” said the attorney, who asked to remain anonymous due to fears of consequences to their clients should their name be used. 

New guidance, issued by ICE in the first two weeks of the second Trump administration, superseded the Biden-era policy and greatly expanded the agency’s discretion when it comes to making arrests at courthouses. One such directive extended courthouse arrest priorities to include anyone with certain specific criminal convictions, gang members, those previously ordered removed, or those who illegally re-entered after deportation. ICE justified the measure as an effort to “reduce safety risks to the public, targeted alien(s), and ICE officers and agents.”

An ICE spokesperson told The Light in an email that courthouse arrests doubled down on points iterated in the January 2025 memorandum.

“The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense,” the spokesperson said. “It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be. It is also safer for our officers and the community.”

The ICE policy advises agents to perform arrests in non-public areas of a courthouse and in coordination with trial court personnel. However,  Massachusetts Trial Court policy forbids employees from initiating communication with ICE or sharing non-public information outside of narrow circumstances. It also forbids them from assisting or impeding ICE in civil immigration arrests.

“There’s obviously some information sharing going on,” Williams said. “That’s probably where a lot of it is coming from. Or maybe just reviewing the daily dockets.”

Secure Communities

In 2013, the Obama administration rolled out the Secure Communities program. The program automatically flags a potentially deportable person for ICE after local law enforcement submits fingerprints to the FBI. It then falls to ICE’s discretion whether to take someone into custody. 

Though Obama suspended the program in 2014, Trump resurrected it in 2017. That is likely what flagged the Dominican woman’s presence in New Bedford court custody to ICE. (The Light chose not to use the woman’s name because details of her case involve domestic violence.) 

New Bedford police had arrested her earlier the morning of Aug. 6 after an incident where she claimed to defend herself after her husband “kicked her on the right side of her hip,” according to the police narrative. Police charged her with misdemeanor assault and battery on a family or household member and felony assault and battery with a dangerous weapon: in this case, a broom.

In November 2025, she filed a self-petition for legal permanent residency through the Violence Against Women Act due to alleged domestic violence at the hands of her U.S.-citizen husband. 

A rap sheet, generated by the FBI at ICE’s request on Aug. 12, and filed in a federal court case on the woman’s behalf, showed only the one misdemeanor charge on her criminal record. It also included an Aug. 6 arrest on a civil immigration charge for staying past her tourist visa expiration date in 2019. 

Once someone faces a criminal charge that could qualify as an aggravated felony — which includes any “crime of violence for which [the] term of imprisonment is at least one year” — it has historically been at ICE’s discretion whether to detain the person. 

“There were priorities that other administrations had set forth,” Klein said.  “[Now], anyone who is deportable, anyone undocumented, anyone with any type of charge — from the most minor to the most serious — seems to be a target.”

“In general,” she added, “this administration considers people with pending applications to not be documented and I think takes the position that they can arrest them.”

‘Their best interest’

Advocates have numerous concerns around ICE’s amped-up courthouse arrest policy. Cases like that of the Dominican woman leave many fearing for the impacts it may have on domestic violence survivors and other crime victims’ willingness to come forward.

“[It] creates fear in the community,” Williams said, “even if someone has to go to court for something relatively innocuous.” 

“Hearing these stories of people being picked up after their court dates,” she continued, “even if they haven’t been convicted. … It’s created a lot of havoc in New Bedford.”

The January 2025 ICE directive also allowed agents to detain other immigrants besides court defendants, “such as family members or friends or family members accompanying the target alien to court appearances or serving as a witness in proceedings.”

Immigration agents’ presence in the court has also created new headaches for defense attorneys.

“ICE is making it harder to advise our clients about their options,” said the public defender who requested anonymity. “They’re scared and we can’t tell them that they’re safe.”

Some defense attorneys will often ask judges to set a bail for clients if they know ICE is in the courthouse, the lawyer added, when in the past they would have asked for release on personal recognizance. That’s because the lawyers believe being in state custody is often safer than ICE custody.

“We are advising clients not to pay bail if they can pay,” they said. “They’d prefer going to jail in Dartmouth or Ash Street as opposed to going to ICE custody [in] who knows where.”

“We feel like we’re not acting in our client’s best interest when we do that,” they continued. “But it’s also in their best interest to not be taken by ICE and deported.” 

On Aug. 19, members of the New Bedford chapter of LUCE, a statewide network of volunteers that monitors ICE activity in Massachusetts, reported on their social media that they spotted two ICE agents at the court, who left with no one in custody.

The public defender hypothesized that when ICE agents come to court and leave with no one, it’s likely because the person was remanded to state custody on bail.

On occasion, ICE agents have picked up those on their way to court for hearings related to criminal charges. On April 22, ICE agents arrested Gregorio Castro Soc, 36, on his way to New Bedford District Court, where he was slated to stand trial on assault and battery charges. The judge in his case, Joseph P. Harrington Jr., issued a default warrant for Soc because he failed to show up due to his detention. It remains unclear whether Soc could still be removed.

“People have been picked up on their way to court,” Williams said. ”We’ve seen this on a number of instances in New Bedford.”

According to records from U.S. District Court Massachusetts, the assault charges against Soc in New Bedford District Court were dismissed without prejudice on June 23 because the prosecutor was not ready to proceed. Federal Judge Julia E. Kobick ordered his release from Plymouth County Correctional Facility on Aug. 18, after almost four months in detention. 

Kobick found that the immigration judge in the case, Luciana Dubuc of the Chelmsford Immigration Court, had not adhered to due process standards. She also said Dubuc’s ruling that Soc was a danger to the community, based on the police report on which he was charged, was inappropriate given that no conviction was attached.  

Klein, of the state public defender’s office, said that one of the biggest issues of people being taken by ICE is how swiftly they may be sent far away with no opportunity to defend themselves in the courts they’re charged. 

“When they are arrested by ICE and taken away to ICE detention facilities all over the country, they can’t get back into court to defend themselves against the charges,” said Klein. “Sometimes they are deported with those charges open.

“There’s so much complicated about all of this,” she added. “It’s a massive due process problem.”

The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to two emails requesting comment. 

PROTECT Act

On Aug. 6, the day ICE arrested the Dominican woman in the New Bedford courthouse, LUCE posted a brief video of what it claimed was an ICE vehicle leaving the court’s car port. The video shows an officer of the court looking on. The car port appears to be operated from an office within the garage. 

Though the New Bedford chapter has repeatedly denied requests for comment by The Light, other chapters have publicly stated that LUCE identifies suspected ICE vehicles through field observations. 

The New Bedford District Court Security Office referred The Light to the state Trial Court when asked for comment about whether the New Bedford court is allowing ICE to use the car port. A spokeswoman for the Trial Court once again directed The Light to its ICE interaction policy. “Trial Court personnel shall neither assist nor impede ICE officers or employees in detaining a person,” it says.  

As of today, all of this is legal. But the PROTECT Act would change that. 

The January 2025 ICE memorandum includes a provision that courthouse arrests can only take place “where such action is not precluded by laws imposed by the jurisdiction in which the enforcement action will take place.”

In response to an email from The Light that included a question about how the courthouse provisions of the law will impact operations after the courthouse provisions go into effect, the spokesperson added that the operations will continue “with targeted enforcement throughout the state of Connecticut,” even though the email from The Light asked about New Bedford and Massachusetts. 

“ICE will continue to make arrests at courthouses and on public streets at or near a courthouse as appropriate,” the spokesman said. “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, ICE is using every lawful tool available to fulfill the American people’s mandate to remove dangerous criminal illegal aliens from the U.S.”

Some who spoke to The Light said they expect the federal government will challenge the law — either by continuing arrests on courthouse properties after Nov. 3 or litigation, or both. 

“I imagine it will be challenged,” said Williams, who supports the bill’s signals to immigrant communities. “It seems like there’s always workarounds ICE is coming up with.”

“I honestly don’t think this will impact ICE behavior,” the public defender said. “I think they don’t respect state law.”

Three weeks in Burlington

On Aug. 26, the Dominican woman left ICE custody after an immigration judge granted her a $5,000 bail to mitigate flight risk. ICE had detained her at the ICE Boston Field Office in Burlington, a place the agency describes as a temporary holding cell. A federal judge in Boston issued a temporary stay of transfer or removal in her habeas corpus case and barred ICE from moving her outside Massachusetts on Aug. 7. 

Attorneys for the government argued that there was no room to house her closer than the Eloy Federal Contract Facility in Eloy, Arizona, south of Phoenix. The government claimed in its arguments that there was no bedspace for women in Massachusetts and the move was necessary due to “operational needs.” She had been in Burlington for 20 days.

Harrison, the woman’s criminal defense attorney, said his client’s experience summarizes why ICE in courthouses is a bad idea.

“I think it’s really terrible,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s all legal.”

Then his thoughts turned to the PROTECT Act. 

“In a couple of months,” he said, “this will not be happening.”

Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org.