The Trump administration has initiated an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Massachusetts, including the Boston area, that is expected to last several weeks, according to two sources with knowledge of the action.
The initiative, which began late this week, is called Operation Patriot 2.0, the sources said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The operation came just days before the Trump administration was expected to kick off an immigration crackdown in Chicago and as immigration arrests have ramped up in Washington.
One U.S. official, who also was not authorized to speak publicly, said the agency had prepared plans for a wider surge of immigration enforcement starting this month.
Top Trump officials have already hinted that they plan to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities, which limit local police cooperation with federal immigration officials. From the beginning of the first Trump administration, top immigration officials have sought to force progressive cities to cooperate, particularly in local jails, where ICE officials prefer to pick up immigrants directly.
Earlier this week, Tom Homan, President Trump’s border czar, said to expect ramped-up enforcement in a multitude of sanctuary cities. A couple of weeks before that, ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, told a radio station in Boston that the agency would “flood the zone” in sanctuary cities.
One homeland security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the operation was targeting the region because of its sanctuary policies, particularly going after immigrants who had been released from custody despite ICE seeking their detention from local jails.
The scope of the operation extends beyond Boston, the official said, because some of those released from custody in the city live outside it.
Boston has drawn the ire of the Trump administration, perhaps because city leadership has been outspoken against the growing scale of the administration’s immigration actions.
“I’m just stating that these tactics are the opposite of what makes communities safer, and no one’s buying that line, that ‘we’re just here to help make everyone safer,’” Mayor Michelle Wu said in June to a Boston public radio station. “We know what safety looks like in the city of Boston.”
This week, the Justice Department sued Boston for its sanctuary city policy, known as the Boston Trust Act, seeking to persuade a federal court judge to invalidate the measure.
“The City of Boston and its mayor have been among the worst sanctuary offenders in America — they explicitly enforce policies designed to undermine law enforcement and protect illegal aliens from justice,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “If Boston won’t protect its citizens from illegal alien crime, this Department of Justice will.”
In his August appearance on a Boston-area radio show, Mr. Lyons, the ICE acting director, said his agency would be making its presence known in the region.
“We’re going to keep making Boston safe, as she’s failing to do with the sanctuary city policies,” he said, referring to Ms. Wu. “Now you’re going to see more ICE agents come to Boston to make sure that we take these public safety threats out, that she wants to let go back in the communities,” he added.
The agency has conducted a regular cadence of operations in Massachusetts. In March, ICE arrested 370 immigrants in the state, of which 165 were so-called collateral arrests, or undocumented immigrants who were not targeted but were in the area of the operation. Then, in May, ICE arrested nearly 1,500 immigrants in the state.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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