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This was the scene at the Boston ICE Tea Party

"Bostonians have always refused to bow down and have been a voice for the nation."

Lights spell out “No ICE” on the Congress Street Bridge, the site of the 1773 Boston Tea Party, as activists throw ice into Boston Harbor in an act of resistance against immigration arrests. Ken McGagh for The Boston Globe

By Madison Lucchesi

December 17, 2025

2 minutes to read

In 1773, colonists threw tea in Boston harbor to protest unfair taxation, but on the 252nd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Bostonians threw ice in opposition to the ICE “terror campaign.”

Hosted by the activist groups Boston Indivisible and Mass 50501, protesters gathered at the Irish Famine Memorial Plaza — just steps from the original tea party starting point at the Old South Meeting House — on Tuesday, according to the activist groups.

Previously:

“The crisis we’re having has a lot of similarities to the crisis that was happening over 250 years ago,” Katy Dirks, a member of Boston Indivisible’s leadership council, said in an interview. “Families are afraid to go out of their homes. We’re outraged right now, and we’re standing up for our neighbors.”

Holding “No Kings” and anti-ICE signs, the group marched along Milk and Congress streets before reaching Waterfront Plaza. Protesters then dumped “clean ice,” per guidance from MassDEP and Boston Conservation Commission, into the harbor next to the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.

The protest also aimed to bring light to the “Trump Administration’s corruption, authoritarianism, and destruction of our democratic norms,” the groups said.

“I think this is one of the most brutal regimes we’ve had in this country, and I want my niece and nephew to remember that it’s important to protest, and that we in Boston are part of a proud tradition of dumping things into the harbor with which we disagree,” Sarah Sievers, of Cambridge, told The Boston Globe at the protest.

“Bostonians have always refused to bow down and have been a voice for the nation,” Dirks said. “We hope that this will be a chance to inspire them for their New Year’s resolutions to start advocating somehow.”

The effort drew criticism from some Trump supporters online who dismissed the symbolic nature of the protest, leaving comments like, “Trump enforces the law, (t)hey throw ice in a puddle.”