Somerville, MA– Late Thursday evening Centro Presente received a panicked phone call from one of our youth members informing us that ICE agents were at his house. The agents had come for an individual who no longer lived at the apartment building. Although the person they were looking for was not in the building and they showed no search warrant, the ICE agents had gained entry and were now going to each apartment and asking for people’s names and identification, which the understandably scared tenants were providing to them. When Centro Presente staff arrived shortly after the agents’ departure, we found a family terrorized by this experience and worried about their future.
This story is all too common for the immigrants of Massachusetts. The immigrant community is frequently unaware of their rights and the limits of the power of ICE. No one needs to open a door for any law enforcement officer if they do not have a search warrant. You do not have to speak to any officer without your lawyer present. What ICE does with alarming frequency is abuse the fact that people are unaware of their rights. Late night knocks at the door by groups of men dressed in black are intimidating to anyone, but even more so to the vulnerable families of neighborhoods like East Somerville.
Centro Presente demands that the agents of ICE respect the rights of all people and stop these outrageous abuses of power. We will step up our existing efforts to ensure that our members and the entire Latino immigrant community are aware of their rights and are trained in the proper response to a visit by ICE agents.
Centro Presente is a state-wide, membership-based Latino immigrant organization that advocates for immigrant rights and for economic and social justice through the integration of community organizing, leadership development and basic services.
