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11 arrested outside Burlington ICE facility in act of ‘civil disobedience,’ police say
The anti-ICE protesters refused to relocate to a "free speech area" that was identified by Burlington police.
Eleven people were arrested Tuesday outside the ICE facility in Burlington after they refused to comply with police orders and relocate their protest, according to law enforcement officials.
Burlington police responded to the ICE field office located at 1000 District Ave. on Tuesday morning after federal officials notified them that about 40 people were blocking the building’s “administrative entrance,” the department said in a release.
For about 40 minutes, officers attempted to “de-escalate the situation” by asking the protesters to leave. A majority of them chose to relocate to a “free speech area” that authorities had identified outside the building’s “security envelope,” police said.
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But 11 people refused to move in an act of “civil disobedience” and were arrested by Burlington police. The department worked with the clerk magistrate at Woburn District Court to release them from custody later in the day at Burlington police headquarters.
Those who were arrested are being issued summonses to appear in court on charges of trespassing and disturbing the peace. They were also issued no trespass orders from Federal Protective Services.
The ICE facility in Burlington is the immigration enforcement agency’s main hub in the Boston area. It is not a dedicated detention facility, but does have some small holding areas intended to house detainees for short periods of time before they are transferred to other, larger ICE facilities around the country.
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As the Trump administration drastically ramped up its mass deportation campaign last year and implemented arrest quotas, concerns grew about the conditions inside the building. Immigrants, advocates, lawyers, Democratic lawmakers, and town officials have consistently raised alarms about the treatment that detainees are receiving inside the Burlington facility. They say that the facility has at times become a bottleneck, leading to overcrowding and “inhumane” conditions.
Protesters regularly gather outside the facility to register their opposition to ICE. Last December, four people were arrested as they attempted to deliver “care packages” to detainees. Burlington police maintain a consistent presence near the facility, and are in regular contact with protest organizers.
“While it is never our initial goal to resolve a situation with an arrest, this was a clear act of civil disobedience in which the parties involved were intentionally blocking the entrance and seeking to be arrested,” Chief Thomas Browne said of the incident on Tuesday. “The Burlington Police Department respects the First Amendment rights of our citizens, and we are also duty-bound to uphold the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
One of the people arrested Tuesday was James Gertmenian, a reverend who serves on the board of The BTS Center in Portland, Maine. The BTS Center, formerly the Bangor Theological Seminary, works to challenge “systems of domination, extraction, and inequity” in Maine.
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Gertmenian said in a Facebook post that the group was arrested while “attempting to deliver food and personal items” to detainees. Many of the protesters were Maine residents, who brought gifts of maple syrup for ICE employees as a gesture meant to “recognize our common humanity with them,” Gertmenian wrote.
The group was released from police custody after about three hours. A police captain “lectured” the protesters, saying that their act of civil disobedience was a waste of time, according to Gertmenian’s post.
“After we were released, I reminded him that while our action was small and seemingly insignificant, we are part of a much larger resistance movement that will, in the end, help to make things right,” he wrote.
In a statement, Browne said that the protest and subsequent arrests on Tuesday pulled nine officers from other assignments to the ICE facility.
“Protestors have been at this facility virtually every day since April 2025, and the ongoing situation has resulted in a significant deployment of public safety resources that would otherwise be deployed elsewhere in this town of nearly 30,000 residents, which almost triples each day with the vast number of people who work within Burlington,” Browne said.
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