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NEW BEDFORD — At least eight people were arrested Monday as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched a major operation centered on the Whaling City.
A Light reporter witnessed an arrest near the waterfront Monday morning, and another Light reporter saw what appeared to be ICE agents in several vehicles using the Dartmouth Mall parking lot as a staging area.
The estimate came from Adrian Ventura, executive director of the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, an organization which hosted a meeting to inform the families of those arrested of resources available to them.
At least four of those arrested Monday worked in fish houses, according to Ventura and other activists.
The Light has identified three of the arrested people as New Bedford residents Miguel Ixcuna-Ixcuna, 30; Israel Sam Cajuil, 38; and Arnaldo Lux. A fourth man identified by The Light, Oscar Abel Gutierrez, 37, resides in Fall River.
According to records at New Bedford District Court, Ixcuna-Ixcuna faced misdemeanor charges for operating a motor vehicle without a license in 2018 and 2024; both were dismissed. The Light has yet to check the records for Sam Cajuil, Lux, or Gutierrez.
Arrest near waterfront
A Light reporter was at the scene at 10 a.m. Monday as agents arrested a man in an orange hoodie on MacArthur Drive near several fish houses. In a video that the Light reporter recorded, masked agents placed the handcuffed man in a black SUV. The agents were dressed in camouflage and bullet-proof vests emblazoned with “POLICE” and “ERO,” the acronym for Enforcement and Removal Operations, a division of ICE.
In the video, activists from LUCE New Bedford, a network of volunteers that monitors ICE activity, can be seen recording the interaction, shouting at the detainee in Spanish to “say nothing,” and blowing whistles.
A male agent can be heard telling one of the activists, “You’re making things worse.”
“No!” an activist shouted back. “You’re making it worse! Why are you here?”
A Light reporter at the Dartmouth Mall observed a large black transit van and several people dressed like the agents on the video. They engaged in a flurry of activity around a half-dozen vehicles before leaving in a caravan around 11:30 a.m. Monday.
The vehicles were seen going toward New Bedford on Route 6 as they left the mall. The general manager of the Dartmouth Mall did not return a phone call requesting comment.
Over the following hour, LUCE New Bedford posted an image of agents apparently arresting someone on Winsor Street and of vehicles parked in an Ashley Boulevard parking lot.
New Bedford School Superintendent Andrew O’Leary told The Light that earlier in the day there were reports of agents near the Alfred J. Gomes Elementary School. He said the school followed protocols for neighborhood disturbances and there was “no further impact to school operations.”
Janet Barbosa, director of special projects and programs for the City of New Bedford, said local authorities “were not made aware” of any operation. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Families and friends impacted
Ixcuna-Ixcuna’s wife, who asked to be identified only by her middle name of Lucas, said she had just finished a check-in at the ICE Field Office in Burlington that morning when she returned to get documents at New Bedford City Hall with her husband.
She said they drove from downtown up Purchase Street, and a white vehicle came out and stopped their car in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts at 1746 Purchase St.
“They asked me for my documents,” Lucas, who said she has asylum and a green card, told The Light in Spanish. “They let me go. But he had nothing and they took him.”
She said the couple’s 3-year-old was in the car with them and slept through the commotion. She woke up afterwards and immediately began to ask for her father in K’iche’, Lucas recalled as tears overcame her.
“I need him,” she said. “The rent is $1,500. Utilities cost $1,600. I can’t cover that on my own.”
Marcos, an immigrant and former journalist from Ecuador who asked to be identified by his middle name due to his undocumented status, gave The Light an account of Gutierrez’s arrest. Marcos said he was at home in Fall River, waiting for a ride to his contracting job, when his boss called at 6 a.m., 30 minutes after his normal pickup time, saying that it would not happen. The colleague charged with pickup, Gutierrez, was arrested by ICE as he left the owner’s Fall River property in the company transit van, Marcos said his boss told him.
“It doesn’t appear they were looking for him,” Marcos said of Gutierrez, adding that he was unaware of a criminal record. “He came here seeking asylum, went to all his hearings, and was approved.”
Marcos added that having an ICE detention hit so close to home made him more anxious about his own future.
“We all are afraid,” he said. “Today, it was our colleague. Tomorrow, it could be any one of us.”
Lawyers ready to file petitions
Heather Arroyo, senior immigration attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, told The Light that 20 lawyers are on standby to file habeas corpus petitions through the institute’s Habeas Project on behalf of those arrested.
“This is definitely a major action and a change in strategy,” she said. “We had been seeing them move a little quieter [in recent months].”
Arroyo said ICE had been operating in courthouses, check-in facilities, prisons, and other locations, where they could operate without the hypervisibility seen during the tenure of former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Arroyo said ICE’s visibility and presence across New Bedford seemed calculated to terrorize.
“This feels different because it is specifically targeting one community and that is causing a lot of fear,” she said. “We want people to understand that we are here to respond to that.”
Ondine Sniffin, a prominent immigration attorney based in New Bedford, said she had not received calls related to her clients but she suspected that would change.
“As of right now, it’s a handful of cases,” she said, adding that it was disproportionately small to the attention the operation received online. “I think in the coming hours and days we will be inundated with reports.”
She added that given the large number of resources ICE seemed to bring to bear in the area, she suspects this will not be the end of operations.
“I think it might carry on several days, so everyone is on high alert,” she said. “We’re ready for it.”
Businesses see decline
Monday morning, activists sent multiple warnings on social media in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole, advising immigrants to stay home due to ICE activity.
Restaurants on Acushnet Avenue in the city’s North End told The Light they were already experiencing a decline in business Monday.
Marilyn Pineda, the owner of Casa Lempira, a Honduran restaurant, said that they locked the front door of the restaurant in an effort to keep people safe.
“A lot of our customers and employees were scared,” she said. “We’re letting [ICE] know that they’re not welcome here.”
She said that she estimated sales Monday dropped 50% from normal due to the fear in the community.
“Nobody’s going out,” she said. “We didn’t realize how crazy this was.”
Next door, Martín Ordoñez, the owner of Restaurante y Tortilleria Guatemalteco, said he also saw a 50% drop in sales Monday since news of the operation went out.
“It’s sad, in all honesty,” he said in Spanish. “Now I’m afraid and sad in all senses of the word.”
Kevin G. Andrade can be contacted at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
Nathan Collins can be contacted at ncollins@newbedfordlight.org
Get these Bullies out of our area! It’s disgusting and un-American!
This bring prices even higher cause who are you gonna find to work those jobs that those POOR people were doing.
Why would ICE be targeting a relatively small city? How would it be determined worthwhile to travel to New Bedford for surveillance on a small population of day laborers and working immigrants. Makes one wonder if there’s a tip off to ICE from a person/hate groups residing in this area.
It’s difficult to reason why local adult children of immigrants are hateful to new immigrants. People working hard to provide their families for a better life and giving back to the community, just like their parents and grandparents did.
ICE is there because New Bedford is known to have a high population of immigrants.
Trump successfully demonized them in order to get votes.
He created a false boogeyman using racist dog whistles to distract his uniformed, racist followers from his real agenda to enrich & empower himself & the wealthiest Americans & large corporations at the expense of working Americans.
He has created an atmosphere of hate & outrage against undocumented immigrants in order to rally support for brutalizing defenseless people.
He has a $45 billion budget to build & staff detention centers.
Don’t be surprised if US citizens end up lost in these internment camps for trying to defend the immigrants.
You are exactly right. This horror must end.
The goal is not to deport violent criminals. The goal is to fulfill a quota of deportations that will justify the enormous amount of money allocated to the Department of Homeland Security in the Reconciliation bill of 2025 and subsequent bill in 2026. That same Reconciliation Bill of 2025 cut funding for food programs, health insurance subsidies, and Medicare allocations to states. Many of these cuts don’t take effect until after the mid-term election in November, when people will really begin to experience them. The people in charge in Congress are the ones enabling this to happen. They are also the people who confirmed this administration’s cabinet appointments. Think about that when you vote in November.
In order to avoid a government shutdown earlier this year, some Democrats signed on to an additional budget reconciliation in hopes that ICE would be reformed, that agents would not wear masks, would be identified, would grant due process, would obtain judicial warrants, etc. None of those reforms happened.
The two articles below describe who is being detained, and how people are profiting from the enormous Homeland Security budget of 2025 and subsequent budget of 2026.
5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions
https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ice-detainees-have-violent-convictions-73-no-convictions
The Deportation Economy: Paid by Taxpayers, Powered by Cruelty
https://amklepto.substack.com/cp/216622913
ICE has also used Flock and other AI surveillance technology not only to track potential deportees, but also to profile citizens who document ICE activities.
Now tell us how much Massachusetts and Maura Healey have spent to support and prop up people who are here illegally. Tax payer dollars spent on non citizens while we struggle with her inflated, green new deal energy prices. Housing crisis, how about all of the non citizens occupying rentable space by the dozens in one apartment? No jobs? how about all of the non citizens taking them (wages would rise if they were put out)
Deport, deport, and keep on deporting, 6 years after the Biden disaster, these illegals do not belong in the United States anymore.
Funny how the bigot coward is always anonymous
Deport, deport… imagine if one day the Native Americans decided to start deporting you guys. You know they will pick the new immigrants 1000 times before they pick the old immigrants.
I know China can build a new Mayflower in 3 days, Iran will give it a red carpet on the strait of Hormuz, and Russia will escort it back to Europe… what I’m trying to say is that one day you will need these people to fight with you and you will have no one standing with you. You can deport people without taking their dignity away.
With a population of 100,000 (New Bedford is not a small city) and known for immigration problems why wouldn’t ICE investigate. The big issue is not whether it is criminal or not, it’s no one should be in this country illegally or undocumented and the state of Massachusetts (Healey) is just as responsible for not making sure that each and everyone of them were vetted for criminal activity and made it mandatory to start the document process to receive benefits (so stop the nonsense and put the blame where it really belongs).
I think there doing a great job there only trying to save your tax dollars there are enough homeless people in new Bedford and fall River do they get free money? No but the people who don’t belong in this country do!
Only 8? ICE needs to pick up the pace.
1.) If they are legal with a clean record let them go.
2.) The “activist” comment “why are you here” tells me the level of brains we are having to suffer.
3.) I continue to fully support this clean up caused by the Democrats in every level of government.
4.) ICE sweet big beautiful ICE will definitely always find you. If you are here under sketchy circumstances, this is a wake up call to start packing. You will be doing the country a favor.
These immigrants came over prepared to work and contribute to the tax base. They are not the ones leaching off the American working taxpayer. What needs to be done is to put an end to people coming over expecting to go on assistance and leech off those that work and contribute to the system. There are people who come to the USA for medical treatments and never pay a cent as well as those retired in their country-of-origin receiving thousands of euros in retirement pay but are currently on Massachusetts Welfare assistance with Medicaid, ebt, rent, and heating assistance. This is out right criminal. That needs to stop immediately. If you have not ever worked in this USA – you need to go back to your country!
Judging from the cold-hearted comments of those supporting the Trump-ICE actions, it is clear that there is a regrettably severe shortage of humanity and compassion in the hearts and minds of some in the New Bedford area.
Keep up the good work, ICE!
The only immigration that is legitimate is legal immigration and applicants are processed through CBP. Being in the USA illegally is a crime and offenders must be deported.
Remember invaders, you don’t hafta go home, but you can’t stay here
Honestly, I can see both sides of this, but what I don’t like is the knee-jerk hatred of those who are simply trying to make a life for themselves and loved ones. The deportation of illegals can be done in a more humane way, but I believe that our current administration rules by distraction, finding a weak and powerless group to our troubles on, while Trump and his ultra-rich scoundrels plunder our beloved nation.
Yesterday, I was called by Humanity at Work with a request to drive two New Bedford elementary school students home from school. After the principal safely handed them over to me and I buckled them in the back seat, the 6-year-old boy asked, “Are you going to kidnap me?” I chuckled but then thought it wasn’t funny to hear a 6-year-old’s fear of being taken away from his family. I was in tears after I dropped them at their home. Was one of the persons kidnapped by ICE a parent of this child?
What’s going to happen to our future generation of children going through these traumatic times? Taking parents away from their children is immoral! The treatment by ICE is inhumane!
Thank you to all of you who came out yesterday to protect our New Bedford community. Humanity at Work is a grass roots organization among other agencies that are working every day to fight against such inhumanity that we witnessed yesterday with ICE.
To all the far left liberal lunatics it’s time to stop the nonsense. If Maura Healey would have had the common sense to say to every illegal, you are more than welcome here, but to stay in Massachusetts it’s mandatory to start your paperwork process to get your legal status, we would not be having this conversation. Do not blame anyone else for the undocumented illegal problem in Massachusetts but Maura Healey, she is a complete disgrace.
There is an element in our community, small, but very vocal and filled with hate.
In their wretched misery, they need to blame someone for the difficulties they are experiencing. Granted, their economic woes are real, and they are facing financial disaster.
While undocumented WORKERS may be an easy target to scapegoat, they fail/refuse to see the real culprit behind the collapse of our middle class and death knell of “The American Dream.”
They blindly ignore the TRILLIONS of dollars of their tax dollars spent on a needless war, no-bid contracts for ballrooms and reflecting pools, and ridiculously over-priced ICE budgets that support privately-owned and operated “detention centers” designed to make people rich while effectively serving as inhumane warehouses for those poor souls our Facist government deems “undesireables.”
The feigned outrage and cries of “Well, they should have followed the law, and deserve what they get,” are hypocritical because the majority of those being rounded up did follow the law and have gone through the appropriate legal procedures.
In case after case, when people try to show their court documents to ICE agents, they are simply ignored and are forced to spend long periods of time in detention while a small group of lawyers argues their cases in the courts, often successfully.
The mission of these raids is to spread fear and terror, and are so riddled with illegalities, that they won’t even inform local law enforcenent because ICE operates above the law.
For those commentators who are cheering this on and finding it all so amusing, I say do your research. Get the facts, and stop relying on rumors and hate-filled media outlets for your so-called “sources.”
And lastly, I suggest you become familiar with your own family history and learn how the last generations of immigrants didn’t have to face the same obstacle course required for entry today.
Everyone is always welcome to their own opinion. Calling people haters because they don’t agree with you, makes you just as much of a hater. Again if Maura Healey would have had the common sense to tell every illegal, you are welcome to come here, but to stay in Massachusetts it’s mandatory to start your paperwork process to obtain your legal status, we would not be having this conversation, and the problems in our community would not be so severe.
In the following excerpt from Letters from an American, September 23, 2026, we see explained in greater detail how ICE is using our tax money to pay foreign dictators for accepting deportees. This is listed as part of this administration’s larger pattern of corruption .
……“On a far larger scale ( of corruption) is the use of tax dollars to pay authoritarian governments to imprison immigrants from the United States who are not their own citizens..
..On Monday, David Nakamura and Adam Taylor of the Washington Post reported that the State Department’s “Office of Remigration” has pledged at least $410 million to facilitate third-country renditions to expel migrants that U.S. courts say cannot be returned to their home countries for fear they will be harmed or killed. So the U.S. has sent more than 25,000 people to at least 28 third countries, including Eswatini, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, for a fee. That money includes $81 million in direct payments to 13 foreign governments, as well as funding for agencies that will then contribute to those countries.
…Those countries either imprison the migrants or send them back to their home countries, a loophole that enables the administration to get around the prohibition on the U.S. sending them there. Last Friday, a federal appeals court found that this policy is unlawful. The administration will appeal to the Supreme Court.”……
…..Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council notes that “Congress should demand answers from those responsible for diverting taxpayer funding intended to protect people from persecution to some of the world’s worst authoritarians, for purposes which clearly violate human rights.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-23-2026?r=5dw603&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
No one is buying this, it’s always so one sided, and the links are from far left liberal sources.
You speak for yourself. You do not speak for everyone else.