Local News
The ICE Boston Field Office is an office building now doubling as a detention center with multiple allegations of poor conditions.
Three people who were trying to deliver supplies to federal immigration detainees were arrested outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Burlington Friday, police said.
Nathan Phillips, of Newton, Natasia Lawton-Sticklor, of Leominster, and Eleanor Reid, of Hanover, New Hampshire are all facing one misdemeanor charge of trespassing.
Police reported to the ICE Boston Field Office Friday around 11 a.m. after ICE agents reported protesters who were refusing to leave the front steps, according to court documents and the Burlington police.
The individuals – later identified as Phillips, 58, Lawton-Sticklor, 42, and Reid, 33 – “were trying to deliver food to the detainees that are in the facility,” according to a police report filed in Woburn District Court.
When police said ICE cannot accept the outside food and asked them to move to the grass, the trio allegedly refused and said they were “not going to voluntarily leave until they were allowed to deliver the food,” the report said.
The Boston Field Office is located in an office building near Burlington Mall. Since the administrative office has been doubling as a detention center, the town is attempting to gain access to inspect the building’s conditions, Burlington officials said in an update Friday.
Lawyers, including representing a teen from Milford who was detained for nearly a week at the Burlington office, have called the facility inhospitable and overcrowded, with detainees sleeping on concrete floors. State officials have called out the “abysmal” conditions.
“We’re here to deliver food and care packages to the people being held here, and visit with them, if possible, to make sure they’re doing okay,” Lawton-Sticklor told WBUR on Friday. “We have some deep concerns about food, basic necessities, being withheld from them.”
After the people allegedly said they had no intention of leaving “until we can deliver the food,” the report said, they were informed they could be arrested.
“You have all been asked multiple times to leave. This is the operational area of this facility. You are disrupting the operations of the facility by being here with no actual business. You have been asked to leave by the security of the facility and the Burlington Police Department,” a captain told the people at the scene, according to the report. “Are you refusing to do so? Are you refusing to leave?”
The three were then arrested without incident, according to police, who noted they believe arrests were the ultimate goal of a planned protest.
Phillips is a Boston University professor who previously participated in a hunger strike to protest what he called threats to free speech on campus amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on international student visas.
Lawyer information was not listed for Phillips, Lawton-Sticklor, or Reid in online court dockets.
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