A 12-year-old boy was left alone on a sidewalk in Waltham, Massachusetts after immigration agents detained the adult he was with.
According to WBZ-TV, a CBS affiliate in Boston, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were seen leaving the boy by himself after conducting an arrest on Felton Street over the weekend.
Neighborhood watch volunteers, who patrol the streets in pink vests, got the boy home safely.
“If we weren’t there, he would’ve just been left on the sidewalk,” Waltham City Councilor Colleen Bradley-MacArthur, who watched the terrifying scene unfold firsthand, said. “It makes me feel sick to my stomach as a mom, as a human being.”
Volunteers were recording the ICE agents, who responded by flipping the script on them.
“They rolled their windows down and had their cellphones and were recording us and taking pictures of us,” Bradley-MacArthur said.
At one point, the councilor recounted, she was standing on a sidewalk when an ICE agent began driving their car toward her.
“I could tell what he was doing. He was trying to intimidate me with his car,” she said.
Footage taken by Bradley-MacArthur showed that the agent stepped out of the vehicle wearing sunglasses and black headgear covering half his face. When she asked him what agency he was with, he responded only by saying, “You need to stand back and not interfere.”
Bradley-MacArthur told him that she was merely observing the interaction, which she is legally allowed to do.
Waltham Police told WBZ News that they do “not aid, assist, or cooperate in ICE’s immigration enforcement efforts.”
“While the Waltham Police Department does comply with judicial warrants and court orders, the members of WPD do not act as agents of ICE,” it said. “The Waltham Police Department only communicates with ICE in cases involving serious criminal offenses, such as violent crimes, consistent with state law.”
Immigration and law enforcement agents across the country have been working in recent weeks to deliver on President Donald Trump’s long-promised mass deportation blitz.
In Washington, D.C. last week, over 100 businesses were visited by ICE agents seeking employees’ documentation.
An ICE spokesperson told the Daily Beast that the inspections were part of a nationwide “worksite enforcement to ensure businesses are following U.S. immigration and employment laws.”
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