Congressman Seth Moulton visited the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Burlington on Monday and said little has changed there since June — there are still no beds or mattress pads, so people continue to sleep on concrete floors or benches.
The holding rooms are less crowded however, the Salem Democrat said after a 90-minute tour. There were fewer than 10 people being held Monday, down from close to 50 in June.
“It does seem that they are moving people through here more quickly,” Moulton said. But he said that expediency means immigrants who are arrested and brought to the Burlington office are swiftly “whisked off” to detention centers in other states, like Texas and Louisiana, often without their families or lawyers being notified.
“Although the humanitarian standards are inadequate and we don’t want people stuck here for a long period of time,” he said, being quickly moved out of state is also a problem when it comes to protecting people’s rights.
“We want to give people adequate access to lawyers,” he said.
Moulton, whose district includes Burlington, came for what his office billed as an oversight inspection amid ongoing public scrutiny over conditions at the ICE administrative building, located not far from the Burlington Mall. Former detainees have said they were often held for days at a time in overcrowded rooms and denied access to showers, medical care and sanitary supplies like pads and tampons.
By ICE’s own admission, field offices are processing centers and not designed for long-term detention. On rare occasions, people are kept longer, a spokesperson told WBUR in June.
The agency has maintained that detainees are “given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.”
Moulton’s June visit coincided with the release of Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 18-year-old Milford high school student who was detained for six days in a room with dozens of older men. At the time, Moulton and U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss showed up to the facility, having given ICE little notice, and asked for a tour, as was their right as congressmen. Not too long after, the Trump administration announced that elected officials must pre-arrange oversight visits. As a result, ICE agents knew Moulton was coming on Monday.
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey made an unplanned appearance there last week and was denied access; he has said he’s made arrangements for a future official visit. Moulton is challenging Markey for his senate seat.
On Monday, Moulton said he witnessed an asylum hearing and had the opportunity to ask federal agents a wide variety of questions, including what typically happens to people who are brought to the facility. He said immigration officials agreed to send him information about the number of people booked into the office and the length of time they were detained.
Earlier this year, the entire Massachusetts delegation asked ICE for this information. The agency did not disclose specifics, but a WBUR examination of data found that hundreds of people were held in the Burlington field office for more than two days during May and June.
Since then, ICE has continued to arrest people across Massachusetts; 1,400 people in September alone, according to the agency.
Moulton said he asked immigration officials if they were transferring people out of Massachusetts to avoid judges who may be sympathetic to immigrants or less inclined to deport them. He said he was told detainees are being moved because of limited in-state detention capacity. Massachusetts has one facility that holds men, the Plymouth County jail, and none that can accommodate women.
Asked if the solution is to build more detention centers in state, Moulton told reporters and dozens of protesters gathered at the site that he’s not pushing to open more facilities.
“But in the case of a female facility in Massachusetts, it actually probably would be smart so that they’re not being sent out of state and that they get to go before Massachusetts judges,” he said.
In at least two recent high-profile cases, immigrant women arrested in Massachusetts have been swiftly transferred to out-of-state detention facilities. In the first, Bruna Ferreira, a Brazilian native who had a child with the brother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, was arrested in Revere last month and taken to detention in Louisiana. And over the weekend, Any Lucia López Belloza, a freshman at Babson College was arrested at Logan Airport, transported to Texas and then deported to Honduras, a country she left 12 years ago.
Moulton said he would continue to press ICE to improve conditions at Burlington, adding “there’s no excuse that they have not had sleeping mats from June until now.” He also said he’d visit again soon, and called on local protesters who’ve been meeting outside the facility weekly to keep up the pressure.
“ Your presence here makes a huge difference,” he said, gesturing to the crowd from the Essex County Community Organization. “They know that they’re being watched, they know that they’re being held accountable, and we’re going to continue doing that until this situation improves.”
Before going inside the ICE field office, Moulton told protest leaders that Democrats in Congress needed to do more to counter the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“ The abuses of ICE need to be prosecuted,” he said. “Yes. Not just defunded — prosecuted. They need to be held accountable to the law that they claim to enforce.”
While many in the audience thanked Moulton for his oversight and efforts to help immigrants, not everyone thought he was doing enough to press ICE on the issue.
“ I was quite frankly disappointed,” Rev. Bernadette Hickman Maynard said. ”I want to hear more than ‘we’re going to follow up and talk to them.’ ”
What’s happening inside the Burlington field office, and to immigrants in general, is “not acceptable and must stop,” she said.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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