U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been using its Burlington field office since at least early May to hold immigrants, often for several days at a time, WBUR has learned.
In interviews, immigration lawyers and family members of those detained describe cramped holding cells with no privacy and modest food rations. Women, in particular, have endured multi-day, difficult stays — in part, lawyers suggest, because there are no ICE detention centers in the state designated for women.
In one case, a woman detained in Burlington had her period and was denied access to menstrual products like tampons or sanitary pads. When she bled through her clothing, a guard allegedly gave her an extra bottle of water and told her to use it to wash up, according to the woman’s sister, Lesly Funez.
WBUR has agreed not to name the detained woman because she remains in ICE custody and the family fears retaliation. A mother of three, she has been held in Burlington for more than a week, Funez said through an interpreter. The family doesn’t know if — or when — she’ll be transferred, released or deported.
WBUR first reported last week on the “abysmal” conditions at the processing center where federal immigration officials held an 18-year-old Milford high school student, Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, for six days.
Upon his release, Gomes Da Silva described being held in a stuffy room with about 40 other men who were at least 15 years older than him. They shared a single toilet and had no privacy when they used it. They weren’t allowed outdoors, and at night, they slept on a concrete floor with a mylar blanket.
Massachusetts U.S. Reps. Jake Auchincloss and Seth Moulton, who traveled to the Burlington office on the day of Gomes Da Silva’s release to meet him and tour the facility, characterized living conditions there as worse than they’d experienced in the Marines.
“To be clear, this is supposed to be a processing facility where people stay for six to 12 hours,” Moulton told reporters, adding that “it’s obviously completely inappropriate — I would say, inhumane — for long-term detention.”
Nearly a week later, lawyers say people continue to be held in windowless rooms that are either uncomfortably cold or hot. Detainees report not having access to showers or sinks to wash hands. And with the lights always on, those inside have no sense of what time it is. Attorney Robin Nice said the only way to keep track of the passing time is by the meager meals offered three times a day.
“This is still going on; Marcelo is not an exceptional case in terms of who is getting detained and for how long,” Nice said. “We know lots of people are held for way more than 12 hours.”
Derege Demissie, a criminal defense lawyer who has filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of several people being held in the facility, called the conditions in Burlington ”punitive” and “cruel and inhumane.”
“If you detain someone, you have to treat them humanely. You have to have the facilities where you can detain people properly,” he said. “You are not entitled or allowed to pick people up and place them in a cell that’s designed to keep people for a few hours.”
An ICE spokesperson in an emailed statement said the Burlington facility is intended to hold detainees “while they are going through the administrative intake process.” Occasionally, the spokesperson added, detainees might need to stay at the Burlington office for a “short period that might exceed the anticipated administrative processing time.”
The statement also said, “While these instances are a rarity, the Burlington field office is equipped to facilitate a short-term stay when necessary. Detainees pending processing are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.”
As WBUR has previously reported, the New England Regional Headquarters for ICE is a 42,000-square-foot administrative building in an office park near the Burlington Mall. It’s a place where federal officials do paperwork in cubicles and where immigrants in active removal proceedings periodically check in with the agency.
But amid a recent surge in immigration arrests that’s brought more people into federal custody than the region can readily accommodate, it’s become a de facto detention facility.
ICE would not confirm the number of people detained in the facility, other than to say it fluctuates. But lawyers for women held there have said their clients are in rooms with anywhere from eight to 12 other people.
Ondine Sniffin, a New Bedford-based immigration attorney, said one of her clients was three months pregnant when ICE arrested her and brought her to the Burlington office. WBUR agreed to identify this woman only by the first letter of her name, L., because she is in ongoing immigration proceedings and worries about reprisal.
Sniffin described L. as a 25-year-old Cape Verdean woman who came to the U.S. with her family when she was 16, and then overstayed her visa. She said L. and her boyfriend live in Rhode Island and have a 2-year-old daughter who is a U.S. citizen.
L. was pulled over for a traffic infringement in Brockton in early May, Sniffin said, and later taken into ICE custody after police discovered an outstanding warrant for her arrest stemming from an unresolved altercation she had when she was 19.
Upon arriving at the Burlington Field Office, Sniffin said, her client told agents she was several months pregnant. But she received the same treatment as the 10 other women in the same holding room — she got a single cloth blanket and a small serving of mac and cheese for dinner.
She told Sniffin the food in Burlington smelled off, so all she had while in custody there was apples and water.
Sniffin said her client spent more than 24 hours in the Burlington holding room. Sometime the following night, she was transported to a detention center in Vermont, where she remained until earlier this week when she was released on bond.
ICE has not allowed lawyers into the part of the office where they hold people, so the exact layout of the facility isn’t entirely clear. But after an ICE agent led Moulton and Auchincloss around the building last week, Moulton described seeing a “handful of cells,” each housing a “half dozen or more people” at a time.
The congressmen said they didn’t go into the cells or speak with the detainees, but they observed food being distributed.
Auchincloss told reporters, “ICE knew that we were coming. They knew to expect us. And I have to imagine that they understood we’d be talking to the press.”
Nice said Gomes Da Silva recounted that agents seemed frantic on the day he was released.
“He said they were just basically running around, passing around papers for people to write down their names, to get a list of all the people who were detained,” she said, and later that day, many of those people were sent elsewhere.
Neither Auchincloss nor Moulton responded to questions about whether they plan to visit the Burlington office again, or how they will monitor the situation there.
Karissa Hand, a spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey, said the state has no oversight of federal facilities like this. She said the governor “believes strongly that detention facilities need to provide humane conditions.”
With Gomes Da Silva out on bond, his attorney said she hopes public attention on the Burlington facility doesn’t fade.
“I would love, personally, to see the outrage from Marcelo expand to include outrage over the conditions, overall,” Nice said.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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