Town Manager: Town Was Not Informed in Advance of ICE Actions
Photo: NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive.
Meeting of the Amherst Town Council, June 2, 2025, Part 1
This was a hybrid meeting held in person in the Town Room of Town Hall and over Zoom and was recorded.
Present
Lynn Griesemer (President, District 2), Andy Steinberg, Mandi Jo Hanneke, Ellisha Walker (at large), Cathy Schoen and Freke Ette (District 1), Pat DeAngelis (District 2), George Ryan and Hala Lord (District 3), Jennifer Taub and Pam Rooney (District 4), Bob Hegner (District 5). Absent: and Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5).
Staff: Paul Bockelman (Town Manager) and Athena O’Keeffe (Council Clerk)
In response to public comments expressing concern for the detention of two Amherst residents by immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on May 28, Town Manager Paul Bockelman stated that the town was not informed of ICE presence in advance. He said, in one instance, police officers driving by while an individual was taken into custody, asked what was happening. In the other case, the incident was caught on a parking lot camera.
Bockelman said that there is not a lot the town can do to stop the ICE actions. He said he has spoken to the governor, our state representative and state senator, and U.S. Representative Jim McGovern. All have been helpful in giving information, but have offered no way to prevent the detention of residents in town. He said that private citizens may be more influential by being able to film the arrests and make them known to the public.
After the arrests, the town issued a statement reaffirming Amherst’s commitment to being a sanctuary city and stating that “To the extent permissible by law, a Town department, or officer or employee of a Town department shall not perform the functions of an immigration officer, whether pursuant to 8 U.S.C. §1357(g) or any other law, regulation, or policy, whether formal or informal.”
According to an Associated Press article quoted in The Daily Hampshire Gazette, almost 1,500 people have been taken into custody in Massachusetts. ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said that 790 of those had criminal records, including the crime of reentering the United States after being deported. Lyons also defended the wearing of masks by ICE agents to protect them and their families.
In Amherst, about 100 people joined the weekly Sunday peace vigil on the Town Common on June 1 to protest the ICE actions. The Gazette reported that $800 was raised to help impacted families and that information was circulated about the LUCE network that offers a round-the-clock hotline that can alert immigrants if ICE is present in the region. The hotline number is 617-370-5023.
Margie Levinson, Vince O’Connor, and Krista Osterling Rising spoke of the efforts of the Rapid Response team and the immigrant led LUCE network to combat ICE activity in town. They recommended additional training for town police to deal with situations where residents are threatened. Levinson said that the two community members taken into custody on May 28 are still unaccounted for.
An open question: What part of being an ICE agent constitutes their being “police”; or is that a misrepresentation of their status? And what constitutes impersonating a police officer?
If I understand your question correctly, Jay, it’s a good one. There is some real, compelling evidence that these ICE “officers” are actually 1099 contractors recruited from the ranks of proud boys, 3%ers, and other dangerous, right-wing, terrorist organizations. There are dozens of images of these folks with white supremacist and neo-nazi patches, tattoos, and other similar regalia. Their equipment is non-standard, not government issued. Many of their tactical vests and gear labeled “police” is available for purchase by civilians on Amazon, etc. They appear to be enacting these immigration “enforcement” actions without any legal basis, no warrants, no badges, no identification. The folks detained are being held without proper reporting of their location or well-being to families or lawyers. We need to call this what it is: extralegal KIDNAPPING at the hand of deputized state thugs. Many of us have been raising the alarm that members of our local PDs likely sympathize with these right-wing authoritarian ideologies and ersatz gestapo actions. The SPLC and others have described, at length, successes of white nationalist and other fascist groups at infiltrating law enforcement agencies at all levels of government. The fear is that at best, our local cops will ignore these actions (as described in the article about last Wednesday’s kidnappings), allowing our neighbors to be unlawfully detained. At worst, they may facilitate or assist in these illegal seizures by preventing community members from intervening, arresting protestors etc. as seen recently in Worcester. Chief Ting should be pressed to appear before the town to commit, explicitly and overtly, that no APD officer will be permitted to assist in illegal kidnappings, nor intervene in whatever peaceful, disruptive actions community members take in response, just like then-Chief Livingstone was pressed to make a statement after Jan. 6 that no officers of the APD took part in the coup attempt.
The jackboot thugs are here folks, what are we going to do about it?