Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has ratcheted up operations in the nearly four months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House — and Massachusetts has certainly not been left out.
“I’m coming to Boston and I’m bringing hell with me,” Tom Homan, the U.S. “border czar,” promised during the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.
While the Trump administration has maintained that its enforcement efforts are confined to targeting “illegal immigrant killers, rapists and drug dealers‚” several of the arrests have been for much more minor crimes — right down to an argument over a cell phone.
Public criticism has reached a fever pitch over some of these arrests, and the tactics ICE employs in undertaking them — which have included approaching a target while wearing masks, an interruption of court proceedings and smashing a car window with an ax while people were inside.
Court battles following the arrests have been high stakes, as the administration has at times deported individuals before the conclusion of their guaranteed Constitutional right to due process.
These are some of the most high-profile ICE arrests that have happened in Massachusetts since Inauguration Day 2025.
Jan. 27: Siblings fight over a phone in Lynn
Zeneyda Barrera, 18, originally from Nicaragua, was arrested by ICE agents on Jan. 27 after she got into an argument with her brother over a cellphone in Lynn.
It was around 4:30 a.m. that Monday morning when a neighbor called the police to complain of loud noise coming from Barrera‘s home.
Barrera, her mother and her 12-year-old brother told Lynn police that Barrera pushed her brother down while they were arguing over a phone.
The 12-year-old was not injured, but Barrera was taken into custody on a misdemeanor assault and battery charge.
However, before her arraignment at Lynn District Court that morning, ICE agents whisked Barrera away to a detention center in Maine.
She remained there for five days until she was released from ICE custody and returned to her family in Lynn, after the Essex County District Attorney’s office dropped the misdemeanor charge against her.
“If ICE’s intent is to target violent offenders who put our community at risk, people like Zeneyda should not be detained,” Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson said at the time.
March 25: A Tufts student newspaper article sparks arrest
Rümeysa Öztürk, a 30-year-old Turkish woman enrolled in a Tufts University doctoral program, was taken from the streets of Somerville by ICE agents on March 25. Federal officials later said the arrest was linked with a pro-Palestinian op-ed she co-wrote for the Tufts University student newspaper.
Öztürk had been on her way to break a Ramadan fast when she was handcuffed and driven off by six ICE agents, some of whom wore masks. Video from the scene showed Öztürk yelling as bystanders asked the agents what was happening.
Öztürk was driven overnight to New Hampshire, then to Vermont, before she was ultimately brought to a detention facility in Louisiana.
Öztürk was never charged with any crimes. The Department of Homeland Security said that she engaged in activities “in support of Hamas,” a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, without providing evidence of that claim.
This contributed photo shows Rumeysa Ozturk on an apple-picking trip in 2021. (AP Photo)AP
After she spent 45 days in custody, during which she experienced long and repeated asthma attacks, a federal judge in Vermont ordered Öztürk’s release from Louisiana on May 9. This followed a tumultuous legal battle between courts in Louisiana, Vermont and Massachusetts vying for control over Öztürk’s detainment.
When she returned to Boston, Öztürk thanked her community at a press conference in the Boston Logan Airport.
Tufts University student from Turkey, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested by immigration agents while walking along a street in a Boston suburb, talks to reporters on arriving back in Boston, Saturday, May 10, 2025, a day after she was released from a Louisiana immigration detention center on the orders of a federal judge.(AP Photo/Rodrique Ngowi)
“I lost both my freedom and also my education during a crucial time for my doctoral studies,” she said during a press conference at Logan International Airport in Boston. “But I am so grateful for all the support, kindness and care.”
March 27: Interrupting a Boston trial
On March 27, Martell Lebron-Wilson had stepped outside of the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse in Boston when he was detained by ICE agents in what bystanders thought was a kidnapping.
Lebron-Wilson, a 49-year-old citizen of the Dominican Republic who entered the country without authorization, was on lunch break during his trial for falsifying RMV records when agents took him swiftly into an SUV.
“Was that a kidnapping? You’re not going to tell us where he’s going?” a man asked the federal agents, who walked away with no answer.
Lebron-Wilson’s criminal defense lawyer, Murat Erkan, argued for his client’s constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial before Boston Judge Mark Summerville, in a contentious hearing at Boston Municipal Court on March 31.
During that hearing, Summerville found Brian Sullivan, one of the ICE agents involved in the operation, in contempt of court. He said Sullivan committed “intentional and egregious violations of the defendant’s rights” by detaining him before his criminal trial had concluded.
This family photo provided by attorney’s shows Wilson Martell-Lebron. (Family photo/Erkan & Sullivan, PC via AP)AP
But U.S. Attorney of Massachusetts, Leah Foley, sought to dismiss the contempt charge by the Boston judge. In April, Federal Judge William G. Young dismissed Summerville’s contempt ruling against Sullivan.
On April 24, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden admonished the case’s dismissal and asked federal authorities to investigate what they described as ICE’s violation of its own procedures.
Hayden had said after the initial ruling that ICE has acted as a “reckless” threat to public safety, and caused witnesses and victims to stop cooperating with law enforcement.
May 8: Chaotic arrest of mother in Worcester
Rosane Ferreira-De Oliveira, a Brazilian mother of three, was arrested in one of the most public and chaotic settings to date.
In a wild scene on Eureka Street in Worcester, in the middle of the day on May 8, ICE agents detained Ferreira-De Oliveira as a crowd of more than 30 people shouted at the agents and demanded to see a warrant. She was eventually taken to be held in Rhode Island.
Local Worcester police arrested the woman’s daughter, who is a minor, at the scene after she stood in front of the car holding a baby, then later ran after the car and kicked it.
Augusta Clara Moura, another of Ferreira-De Oliveira‘s daughters, has spoken out about what led up to her mother’s detainment.
Her partner, Samarone Alves Ferreira-De Souza, had honked at a car that cut him off while he was driving to work, according to Clara Moura. The car turned out to be an undercover ICE vehicle and agents arrested him.
The day after, agents came to Clara Moura‘s home and asked her to return Ferreira-De Souza‘s car and sign immigration paperwork, she said. When she left her house with her 17-year-old sister and her baby to do so, ICE stopped her car, and “told me I was under arrest,” she said.
Clara Moura called her mother to take her son and when she arrived, ICE arrested her instead, according to Clara Moura.
April, May: ICE smashes car windows in 3 communities
At least three incidents where ICE smashed car windows in order to arrest people have been reported over the past four months by NBC Boston. These incidents happened in New Bedford, Chelsea and Waltham.
In New Bedford, Juan Francisco Mendez was arrested on April 14 after ICE agents smashed through his car window with an ax and pulled him from the vehicle. His wife recorded the incident, and Mendez can be heard saying, “My lawyer is on the way.”
Less than a month later, on Mother’s Day, ICE agents broke through the window of an SUV in Chelsea as a family left together from church. A man was ripped from the vehicle, thrown to the ground and handcuffed during the daytime arrest, as bystanders heard him ask why he was being detained, NBC reported.
And the next day, ICE agents broke through a car window in Waltham to arrest two men in a downtown area of the city. The incident was recorded by a 15-year-old girl who was waiting for the school bus that Monday morning.
‘Fear and disorder’
These and other arrests have left Massachusetts communities on edge — to the point where ICE itself has begun addressing rumors about their activities.
On Monday, rumors that ICE agents were “scooping up nannies” on playgrounds in Boston circulated heavily online, just days after those same fears developed in Washington, D.C.
ICE released a statement Tuesday denying the allegations.
“Any rumors that ICE officers are targeting nannies at playgrounds or parks are entirely false and absolutely ridiculous,” the statement from Acting Field Office Director Patricia H. Hyde for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston.
Hyde said the rumors “amount to nothing more than scare tactics and unnecessarily place the safety of our brave officers in jeopardy.”
Other people originally from the state — and who are U.S. citizens — reported they’ve been asked to leave the country by DHS in past weeks. This includes three immigration lawyers originally from Massachusetts, who received letters on April 11 that began with the line, “It is time for you to leave the United States.”
One of the recipients — Pamela Rioles Saeed, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer in Arizona who was born in Boston and moved in 2018 — said she was “frustrated” the government was “so careless.”
The letters only “ … serve to instill fear and disorder for those who received it,” Saeed said at the time, and show “either gross incompetence or willful indifference from DHS.”
