ICE agents in Worcester, MA assaulting and arresting a 15-year-old girl after her mother was seized [View all]

https://bsky.app/profile/strictlychristo.bsky.social/post/3loprlpyxus2i

Agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency conducted the seizure of one person on Eureka Street in Worcester, and officers of the Worcester Police Department arrested two at the scene on Thursday, May 8.

District 5 City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj, who was at the scene, which is inside her district, says the agents refused to identify themselves and produced no warrant before taking the mother of two into custody.
https://thisweekinworcester.com/ice-seizes-woman-worcester-050825/

I'm driving five miles across the city to check out a tip that there's an ICE rendition ongoing. I've got the scanner on the car stereo as I'm about to pull onto the street in question. It’s a quiet neighborhood, small houses on small lots, people walking dogs, the mailman waving, the lawnmowers running, and I hear the dispatcher: "We have an ICE officer over there who's allegedly being surrounded."

"On our way," the officer responds.

As a local reporter for a decade now, I've learned that you can hear the cops at their most honest on the scanner. And as I'm hearing that “surrounded” comment I remember what the city's police chief told the city council in January:

"We do not do civil detention arrests," Police Chief Paul Saucier said at the time, reassuring them that they wouldn’t be party to the ICE assault Trump was about to unleash. The police, he said, "do not have the authority to affect a civil arrest."

What he didn't say is that if you try to stop the civil arrest, the police will stop you from stopping it.

This morning a few dozen of us here in Worcester Massachusetts got to see that unstated fine print in action firsthand. A woman was led by federal agents in cuffs away from her family, through a throng of community organizers trying to stop it, and into an unmarked car. The local police arrived to prevent the community from protecting their neighbor from an unlawful kidnapping. They succeeded, and in the process arrested two of the people who tried to stop it.
https://www.welcometohellworld.com/they-dont-need-a-warrant/