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Jeanneth’s husband walked into Lynn District Court last September to dispute a minor civil infraction — a light out on his car.
As he left his hearing, he video-chatted with Jeanneth. That’s when she saw four immigration agents detain him. There were four more outside.
“I saw the security officers at the court, then the ICE officers, and he said to me, ‘Please, take care of the children.’ And then they took away his phone,” she said.
Jeanneth’s husband’s detention was one of at least 614 arrests that were made in Massachusetts trial courthouses in 2025 by federal immigration agents, according to data acquired from the trial court system by GBH News through public records requests.
GBH News is using a pseudonym for Jeanneth, who is applying for a U-visa as a victim of violence, and fears being detained and deported.
“People across Massachusetts are horrified that our neighbors are being disappeared at state and local courthouses, robbing all of us of the opportunity to be heard or seen through the legal system in any meaningful way,” said Gloribel Rivas-Soldz, of LUCE ICE Out of Courts, a Massachusetts-based organization that protects immigrants.
LUCE’s network of advocacy groups is advocating for state legislation banning ICE courthouse arrests, mandating virtual access to all state courts, and stopping all court and law enforcement cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The group’s ongoing efforts are among many from advocates that have spurred both the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus and Gov. Maura Healey to file legislation in the past two months to limit ICE at courthouses for civil arrests.
“There is no law that is protecting our courthouses,” said Rep. Judith Garcia, a Chelsea Democrat and co-sponsor of the caucus-backed legislation. “When you take a step back and you realize what we can be doing to make sure that within state parameters, we act and we stop these numbers from increasing.”
Human impact
December saw the greatest number of arrests last year, 86 total, with over a third occurring in courts north and west of Boston. Courts in that area are part of Region 3, which covers 17 district courts, including Waltham, Lawrence and Lynn, as well as six housing courts, four probate courts, four superior courts, and several juvenile.
Jeanneth’s husband was one of 25 immigrants detained in the that region in September.
In August, local police had detained him over a blown taillight and he was released after a brief court hearing. He successfully disputed the issue at the September hearing, but was detained walking out.
He was detained at Plymouth, transferred to Louisiana and Texas, and eventually deported to Guatemala. Jeanneth says he has no previous criminal record or charges, and had a notice to appear in immigration court, standard practice for immigrants. He had a special immigrant juvenile visa for immigrants who come to the U.S. as a youth, and had a pending immigration court hearing to adjust his status.
He helped support his wife, his two stepchildren, and their 7-month-old baby, while Jeanneth worked seasonal construction. Now, finances are difficult, especially since the family with which they shared an apartment moved out, and she now must foot the entire rent herself.
“It’s affected me emotionally and psychologically, and the stress — he was the one who worked the most, who paid more rent, and covered most of the expenses, so it’s affecting us,” she said.
Kelly McGuire is a “verifier” with the Lynn group El Comite de la Nueva Primavera who spends time observing ICE actions and documenting their interactions. He’s also part of the steering committee for the group, which helps immigrants impacted by deportations
He said the hundreds of arrests statewide last year, and the concentration of those arrests in the Lynn region, didn’t surprise him.
“It makes my skin crawl,” he said. “You know, this is our property. This [court] belongs to the people, to the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and that’s certainly where we see ICE the most.”
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t return repeated requests for data and comment for this story.
“People have every right to go to court and participate in the judicial process without being afraid of being kidnapped,” he said.
Nueva Primavera is one of many groups planning a large rally this Saturday with over 100 community leaders to focus on the issue.
By the numbers
ICE agents can carry out civil immigration enforcements when they have “credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present at a specific location,” and if the area has no laws imposed that bar it, according to federal law. There is no state law barring ICE from arresting immigrants in and around courthouses.
This week, the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts wants to focus attention on courthouse arrests with rallies outside of several courthouses, including New Bedford, and Chelsea, in an effort to push legislation to change that.
This year in Chelsea, there were 10 ICE arrests at the district courthouse between Jan. 2 and Feb. 28. In 2025, there were 57, according to the trial court system. That’s triple the 19 total in 2024.
In New Bedford, there were three arrests in that same 2026 time period. It is unknown how many immigrants were arrested there in 2025. The heavily immigrant community has constant sightings of ICE agents at the local district court.
Records obtained by GBH News show that April and June had the least ICE arrests at courthouses, 28 each of those months statewide. After December, the month with the greatest number of arrests was May, with 71.
The data divides monthly numbers into the five trial court regions, each of which include several district courts, probate, superior, and juvenile courts.
Region 3, which includes municipalities with large Latino populations, such as Lynn, Lawrence, Waltham and Lowell, saw 227 detentions, more than any other region. The numbers grew from six people in April to 31 in December.
“There’s a high Hispanic population, and ICE is regularly in-and-around the courthouse,” said Ryan Sullivan, a defense attorney who frequents Lawrence’s District Court. “We see them coming into the clerk’s office to look at lists of people who are scheduled there. They’re waiting outside of where individuals are released from custody after their case is dismissed.”
Except for May — when ICE’s second major operation, dubbed “Operation Patriot,” occurred — Region 1, which encompasses western Massachusetts, always had low numbers, with about one to three people detained most months.
Region 2 has Gateway Cities with heavy Brazilian populations, like Fitchburg and Framingham, and towns where ICE has had significant presence, like Milford. The number of detained immigrants in that region totaled 140 for the year.
Region 4's South Shore courts, including Brockton, Fall River, and New Bedford, had arrests grow from three in January, to 13 in December. In total, the region was the site of 89 courthouse arrests last year.
Region 5, which includes Chelsea, Boston’s Suffolk Superior court, and Boston’s municipal courts, saw a total of 136 people detained last year.
Court interactions and action
A policy statement from the Executive Office of the Trial Court last May says that court officials can’t initiate communication with ICE agents, but must provide publicly available information to agents when asked.
“My experience has been that the policy is basically meaningless,” said Nicholas Louisa, a defense attorney in Middlesex County. “I think essentially what happens is that court officers develop relationships with certain ICE officers. The policy may prohibit a court officer from proactively contacting an ICE officer, but really, all that needs to happen is the ICE officer needs to just send a text to the court officer — you know, 'Is this defendant in court today?’ And that initiates ... the conversation and the court officers [are] free to respond.”
Louisa said many arrests occur just off courthouse grounds as someone is leaving court, so the trial court data is limited to what occurs inside the walls of the court and on its property.
At a recent hearing for the so-called PROTECT ACT, supported by the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, there was discussion of the trend where immigrants are reluctant to use the the judicial system due to the arrests. Brenda Romero, an immigrant mother from Honduras, testified publicly about her experience with her husband’s detention by ICE at a courthouse, and her reluctance to pursue justice against the alleged rapist of her teenage daughter.
“Not because I do not want justice, but because I am afraid to walk into a courthouse,” she said.
Marian Ryan, district attorney of Middlesex County, said there are several ways that immigrants’ reluctance to enter courthouses hampers court proceedings.
“There’s, first of all, the inability that we have sometimes to go forward with a case. If we don’t have the appropriate witnesses to testify, that case may not be able to go forth,” she said. “If you don’t a defendant present, we may not be able go forward. If somebody disappears mid-trial, that may cause the court to declare a mistrial.”
Sen. Lydia Edwards, Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, and has gone to observe the East Boston Courthouse when constituents tip her off about ICE sightings.
“They’re basically are using them as fertile hunting grounds,” said Edwards of ICE agents at the East Boston and Chelsea courthouses. She said the presence is having a “chilling effect” on immigrants.
“People who are trying their best to support their moms, their dads, who are victims themselves of crimes, who are witnesses— people don’t want to go to court,” she said.
Edwards filed her own bill in January that would place limits on ICE taking people into custody at court for civil matters, like overstaying a visa. Her bill would require ICE agents to show a judicial warrant to court personnel in order to take someone into custody for a civil matter.
Pranav Nanda, an attorney for the Roxbury Defenders Unit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, has witnessed several arrests of clients at a Boston municipal court. He said the environment has changed at courthouses.
“I saw the stress and anxiety in clients I was talking to, in family members, community members who were in the court building, and just a whole range of people, honestly, even as attorneys, the stress of anxiety of having them there,” he said.
Nanda fears that as courthouse arrests continue, “it somehow gets normalized.”
“Unfortunately I’ve seen other court actors kind of just say, 'Well, this is the new normal. We kind of just have to go with it,' rather than using ... whatever power and positions they have in their ways of influencing and pushing back against that,” he said.
But those who have loved ones who were detained, including Jeanneth in Lynn, hope to send a message.
“The court does not have to be collaborating with the immigration officials,” said Jeanneth. “What the immigration officers are doing is taking people who work, men who have a family, pay taxes, support their families. They are going after people who commit the most minor of offenses, while people who commit major crimes are out there. We are not delinquent, we are working people, honorable people.”
