Trackers seek Hanscom webcams as outrage builds over ICE flights
“ICE isn’t going to be transparent on its own. We need to force them.”
The latest tactics in the fight to get Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of Hanscom Field include a team of spotters and blurry photos of detainees being led to waiting planes.
Activists want the airfield’s quasi-public operator, Massport, to give them a clearer view.
“ICE isn’t going to be transparent on its own,” resident Marsha Turin told The Acton Bridge. “We need to force them.”
Advocates say detainee flights from Hanscom have continued in recent months. Hanscom Field Advisory Commission (HFAC) members are speaking out and, on August 11, formally asked for 24/7 cameras at the airport.
“If Massport cares about this — I think — horribly inhumane and illegal operation, they should be cooperating with peaceful observers,” HFAC’s Christopher Eliot said at the group’s July 21 meeting.
Detainee experiences
ICE resumed shuttling detainees through Hanscom in September after a brief pause.
Demonstrators are holding weekly protests against the flights. HFAC members have written letters, met with a lawyer offering constitutional arguments, and huddled with Massport as commissioners push to stop the planes.
One court ruling described Laura Maria Guevara Peruano’s experience being flown through Hanscom in January.
Peruano, who is from Ecuador, has epilepsy. She suffered a “severe seizure” at ICE’s Burlington office before her flight, but ICE didn’t provide her with medication, food, or bathroom access during her 12-hour transfer, federal Judge Leo Sorokin wrote in an order affirming a previous decision to release her while her immigration case played out.
De-ICE Hanscom spokesperson Todd Palmer said, “We understand the linkage” between the Burlington office and Hanscom, which lets ICE quickly move people out of state.
“It’s important that we know where they went” as attorneys fight for their rights and families try to keep in touch, he told The Bridge.
Palmer showed HFAC photos of Hanscom operations, and The Bridge independently obtained images of people in handcuffs waiting to board planes.
It’s hard to make out faces from pictures, and Palmer said spotters sometimes can’t count how many people are boarding a given plane.
Eliot said being able to see faces is crucial; it’s sometimes “the only way” that lawyers and families learn relatives were flown to another state.
Observation proposals
On August 11, HFAC approved twin motions that Eliot first floated last month.
One asked Massport to “to treat all airport observers in public areas of the airport equally without restrictions on duration or use of recording equipment.” The second asked airport operators to provide webcams covering areas where ICE interacts with detainees.
Seattle-area Boeing Field has a similar system, and advocates here say that could help them count and identify detainees getting onto planes. HFAC members are bracing for pushback over privacy concerns, especially as they call for web cameras.
Massport spokesperson Jennifer Mehigan told The Bridge the agency “would consider the merits” of any community request. An ICE Boston spokesperson didn’t respond to Bridge questions about recent Hanscom activities.
Palmer’s presentation said that since October, De-ICE Hanscom had tracked 114 flights carrying an estimated 2,221 detainees.
Massport leaders have said they can’t stop ICE from using their facility. Critics disagree and say the agency is complicit.
“If Massport wants to turn its head, we’ll have to move our sign [and] move ourselves where they’re looking,” said Turin, the Acton resident and community organizer.
‘You stole my best friend’
Turin was part of a July 31 protest near the Hanscom entrance.
A protester shouted “ICE out” over the sound of Edwin Starr’s “War” playing through a speaker. Another danced in an eagle costume.
One of many people holding signs, an 8-year-old boy, had a message for ICE: “You stole my best friend.”
One spotter positioned herself to record the license plate of a van that she said had just dropped off detainees. The van’s driver pointed a phone camera back at demonstrators as he passed.
Asked how she feels when she sees vans and buses full of detainees, Acton HFAC representative Terri Ackerman said she wonders, “What am I doing just standing here?”
“Why don’t I just stand in the middle of the road and block them?” she said.
Ackerman said she talked the idea over with Turin, who warned her she’d go to jail.
“I’m like, ‘yeah,’” Ackerman said. “It’s thinking about your options like that.”
This story has been updated from the August 7 print edition.
