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BURLINGTON — U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley was blunt in her remarks after a visit to a notorious U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office north of Boston Thursday.
During a visit that lasted about 90 minutes, Pressley, who represents the 7th Congressional District which includes Boston, told reporters and demonstrators that although conditions had improved, the visit changed nothing about her position regarding the agency.
“I’m leaving here with my position unchanged, that we need to defund and abolish ICE,” she said, adding that she thinks it unlikely that those detained will ever forget their experiences.
“That being said, the trauma for what [detainees] experienced will remain,” she said.
Pressley said that detainees sleep on mats and have thin Mylar blankets. She emphasized that the facility is meant as a short-term holding facility. Her main concerns, she said, were for the medical needs of those detained.
She pointed to the death of Emmanuel Damas, a 56-year old Haitian man from Boston held at the Florence Correctional Center in Florence, Arizona, who died on March 2 at a Scottsdale hospital after a tooth infection was left untreated for two weeks as evidence of her concerns.
A New Bedford woman, Candelaria Natalia Tzunux Pu, who was four months pregnant when detained at New Bedford District Court by ICE on New Year’s Eve, was not allowed to speak with a doctor during a clinical visit while having a medical emergency that put her pregnancy in jeopardy. The pregnancy was still viable after her release.
“We asked a lot of those questions, and we have more questions than answers that are pending,” Pressley said. “The work of oversight does not end after this visit, and we will continue to do that.”
Previous reports from inside the facility said there were no mattresses for the detainees.
The congresswoman also expressed ire at the detention of a 14-year old Brazilian girl from Marlborough taken into custody by agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a subdivision of ICE, on Tuesday. She was swiftly transferred to Texas. A federal judge in U.S. District Court Massachusetts ordered her to be returned to Massachusetts and released into the custody of an aunt in Weymouth just before Pressley’s visit.
Pressley added that food was being consistently provided to detainees at the facility including vegetarian options to accommodate medical and religious needs. She assured those present that women did have access to feminine hygiene products, a topic of concern after a New Bedford woman, Yury Melissa Aguiriano Romero, reported in court filings and in an interview with The Light that there were only three available to be shared among 19 women during her 11-day stint at the facility in 2025.
Pressley also emphasized the role of congressional oversight. She gave ICE a week’s notice before her visit in accordance with rules put forth by then-U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in January. A federal judge in U.S. District Court Washington, D.C., struck down those rules earlier this month.
“I just want to say that in the midst of this active, growing, fascist state, I’m grateful for our first line of defense,” Pressley said. “And that is the courts. Our strategy remains litigation, legislation, agitation and mobilization.”
Other visits
Pressley is the fourth member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation to visit the facility since Trump took office in January 2025.
Conditions at the facility have continued to be a focus of concern since Massachusetts Congressmen Jake Auchincloss and Seth Moulton visited the facility in June shortly after the high profile detention of Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, a Medford teenager detained by ICE on his way to volleyball practice. Aguiriano Romero later told The Light she saw the pair during her time there.
“The conditions that we saw are conditions that would be appropriate for the processing over the course of 12 to 24 hours, not appropriate for someone to be spending a week in,” Auchincloss said at the time.
“No beds, not what anyone else would call a blanket, sparse food, no windows even, it’s obviously completely inappropriate, I would say inhumane, for long-term detention and that’s what Marcelo experienced,” Moulton remarked after that visit.
Moulton returned to the facility in December and reported that inmates remained without beds and that though the facility had improved from his previous visit, it left much to be desired.
“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 at the time. “But they are far better than what we have seen in other facilities in other places that we have seen.”
Shortly afterward, Sen. Ed Markey, who Moulton is trying to unseat in the Democratic primary, also visited the facility.
No human being should be denied dignity,” he said in a Facebook post of the visit. “The Trump administration has broken our promise of justice and we must repair it.”
In January, ICE denied entry to Connecticut Congressman John Larson when he attempted to visit the facility unannounced. In February, agents denied entry to Massachusetts Congresswoman Katherine Clark, the House Democratic Whip, when she attempted to visit the facility unannounced.
“Members of Congress have the right and responsibility to conduct oversight. That duty includes carrying out inspections of ICE facilities,” Clark said in a statement. “Last week, a federal court ordered the Trump administration to allow Members to fulfill that duty — yet today, I was denied access to the ICE field office in Burlington.
“Republicans have taken away resources from DHS programs that actually keep Americans safe — like fighting human trafficking, disrupting fentanyl pipelines, and boosting cybersecurity efforts — in order to unleash cruelty and chaos into our communities,” she continued. “At the Burlington facility, we have seen reports of inhumane conditions and its illegal use as a detention center.”
The remaining members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Bill Keating, Rep. Jim McGovern, Rep. Lori Trahan, Rep. Richard Neal, and Rep. Stephen Lynch — have not conducted oversight visits.
Wide support for ICE abolishment
Pressley is not alone in her calls to abolish the agency. Moulton has been outspoken throughout his campaign for the Senate for just such an action.
“And that’s why I have been unafraid to take on the administration directly.”
“What spurred me to say ICE needs to be abolished is the reality that I’ve seen on the ground,” Moulton told The Light in February. “We need to stop what’s going on.”
President Donaid Trump, he said, “is not just trying to terrorize the immigrant community. He’s trying to terrorize blue cities, and he’s ripping apart communities all across America with what he’s doing.”
Markey has also expressed his support of abolishing ICE.
“Right now, Democrats have the power to defund and abolish ICE. We should do it. This is about right and wrong — and the murder we are seeing on the streets is just plain wrong,” he said in a post on BlueSky in January, shortly after federal agents killed Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during protests in Minneapolis. “Anyone who supports funding DHS and ICE is supporting the murder of Americans. We can stop this.”
Pressley pointed out that ICE is a relatively new agency, having been established in 2003 after the Homeland Security Act passed the previous year.
“This work has nothing to do with law and order,” she said. “If you are actively violating people’s constitutional rights to due process and, in many instances, their civil and human rights, it certainly has nothing to do with public safety.”
Pressley credited protests and continued congressional oversight of the facility as the main reasons for the improvements at the Burlington facility. But there’s still work to be done.
“The state of our union is traumatized,” she said. “We can’t just operate with business as usual. These are unprecedented times.”
Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
