Local court proceedings stall indefinitely in cases involving ICE

UPDATED Feb. 16, 12:45 p.m. We clarified language in paragraph three regarding the court history of the 21 individuals arrested.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity over the past year has impacted Waltham residents’ ability to get a fair trial at the Waltham District Court.

When ICE officers arrest criminal defendants in the middle of the trial process, this can leave cases in a state of limbo, affecting the court, the defendants, their families, victims and witnesses.

ICE records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a coalition of academics and lawyers compiling public information about ICE operations. Out of the 21 people who were arrested, three had previously been convicted of a crime and one had no criminal history known to ICE. The other 17 had ongoing court cases that had not yet been resolved at the time of their arrest.

The Waltham Times has been tracking 19 people with 20 active cases in the Waltham District Court who are currently in ICE custody or whom ICE has deported and are therefore unable to appear for their court dates.

“It was more common — certainly until this most recent ramp-up — that immigration would generally wait until a case was resolved before they would seize somebody. But now I’m seeing it occur while a case is pending,” said Woburn-based attorney Neil Tassel.

Other lawyers from Greater Boston also said they’ve seen more ICE arrests happen in front of courthouses across the region.

Lowell-based attorney Anthony Puopolo in a September interview with The Waltham Times said he, too, had noticed an increase in ICE detainments involving individuals with active court cases. “It’s not a dramatic uptick … but there is an obvious [change],” he said.

A Boston-based attorney who specializes in deportation cases and requested anonymity fearing retribution against the immigration organizations with which she works, said ICE agents seem to be arresting individuals who’ve been arrested for a crime but not yet been arraigned. She said those individuals had not yet been assigned public defenders. She also said there’s often no one in the court system responsible for knowing their whereabouts.

“The arrests have been [for] something … as minor as driving without a license. These are not violent offenders,” she said.

Tassel said ICE enforcement may have families and friends deciding to leave defendants in jail rather than post bail, because they may forfeit bail if the defendants are detained by ICE and therefore fail to make court appearances.

Tassel described this as a cruel consequence of ICE’s enforcement, negatively impacting defendants — who remain in jail instead of being released on bond — and their loved ones. “It often occurs in the families who can afford to lose that bail money the least,” he added.

Results of ICE courthouse policy changes

The uptick in disrupted court proceedings due to ICE detentions follows a 2025 change in policy.

ICE Acting Director Caleb Vitello in January 2025 issued a memorandum on how ICE agents should carry out arrests around courthouses, setting the standard for ICE’s current guidelines on the subject. 

Some elements of the guidelines stayed the same as they had under previous administrations, which also allowed ICE agents to arrest individuals at or around local courthouses in some cases. However, the new guidelines no longer require agents “to the fullest extent possible” to make sure they conduct the arrests “at the conclusion of the judicial proceeding.” Instead, the policy requires only that “When practicable, ICE officers and agents will conduct civil immigration enforcement actions against targeted aliens discreetly to minimize their impact on court proceedings.”

Neither representatives from ICE’s local Burlington office, which is responsible for ICE operations in much of New England, nor ICE’s national media relations office responded to multiple requests for information and comment about its arrest guidelines and their impact on local court cases.

A lack of public information and agency transparency

The lack of available information on a detainee’s whereabouts as well as out-of-state detentions further complicate Massachusetts court proceedings. The case of one Waltham resident charged with unarmed robbery and possession of a class B drug illustrates this, as his lawyer and the Waltham District Court were unable to find him in time for an October hearing. 

ICE’s detainee tracker no longer displays information for detained individuals after ICE removes them from the country or when ICE is transporting them between facilities. 

For many, the only way to find information about people in ICE custody is to reach out to ICE offices, which doesn’t always work: Both the ICE Burlington office’s public phone number and ICE press line now redirect to a voicemail message.

Moreover, ICE does not publish information on where individual detainees have been taken.

Third parties such as the Deportation Data Project have obtained information about those operations but only through Freedom of Information Act requests. 

Tassel said he is generally only able to contact clients who have been detained by ICE and obtain information about their whereabouts if their families contact him to provide the information.

However, once a detained individual is out of the state, as they often are, that person is beyond the jurisdiction of Massachusetts district courts. 

Waltham District Court does still sometimes try to file a writ to summon detained individuals held out of state. However, such efforts are not always successful.

Defense lawyers can file federal habeas corpus cases, filing for wrongful detention, a strategy also employed by immigration lawyers in cases where they argue ICE has wrongfully detained their client. If a federal court rules in their favor, they can then summon their client to court. Massachusetts lawyers have reported that these cases have become increasingly more common in the past year.