El Mundo Boston CEO takes Facebook show to streets to report on local ICE enforcement

Alberto Vasallo always has lots of ground to cover as a journalist and the CEO at El Mundo Boston. The multimedia news organization covers Latino communities in the Greater Boston area.

And for the past week-plus, Vasallo has spent much of his time working to sort fact from fiction when it comes to crackdowns by federal immigration agents.

Vasallo streams an hour-long weekday morning show, La Hora del Café, live on Facebook. He usually does the show from the El Mundo studio, where he also streams on YouTube. In recent days, he took the show to the streets as information about supposed sweeps by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents was spreading in the community.

He did his first livestream report on the issue Wednesday, Jan. 29, after, he said, social media posts and text messages stating that immigration agents would be targeting people on the Blue Line of the MBTA circulated widely.

Immediately after he went to the Maverick T station in East Boston to check out the claims, which turned out to be incorrect, he got word ICE agents were at a construction site in Revere. He went there and did another live report on Facebook, as he learned from construction workers that some of their crew had left out of fear when they heard ICE was coming. But no ICE agents showed up.

No one knows where the posts and messages originated, according to Vasallo.

He followed up on other claims of immigration crackdowns for the next several days, and each time, there was either no immigration activity or only a few agents looking for or arresting an individual who had been targeted.

Vasallo joined Lynn Jolicoeur on WBUR's All Things Considered.

On the fear, misinformation and disinformation that have been spreading:

Alberto Vasallo: "There was all of these posts on social media, especially on WhatsApp groups, saying beware of tomorrow, the Blue Line, ICE. So the next morning, we decided to be there to see what really was going on.

"You have, on a daily basis, the federal government saying everybody's on the table. You have them saying, 'We're going to go into schools.' And then you have local officials saying, 'No, they're not.' So if you don't command the [English] language, and you're mostly working [and can't follow things closely] or you recently arrived [in the country], you don't know who or what to believe.

"I would say there is fear. There is anxiety ... folks are confused. And then you add in social media, which is The Wild Wild West in terms of trying to get solid information."

On the wider impacts the fear is having on the community:

"We had this video that went viral last week from Market Basket in Chelsea — completely empty the day after ICE had decided just to kind of gather [in the parking lot]. They didn't do any kind of operation or anything — they were just there. And the very next day, on a Thursday, around 6:00, when Market Basket in Chelsea is usually packed, if you see the video, it's completely empty. There were just employees.

"We had [the] Lynn Public Schools Superintendent [on our show], [and] we'll have the Salem Public Schools superintendent, because they're concerned that parents are not sending kids to school out of fear."

On whether he has any concern about over-dramatizing the situation: 

"No, and  I want to double down on that, because I think we've been doing the opposite. We've been dispelling so much fear. If this wasn't done, I can guarantee you that if you walked around East Boston tomorrow, most people would have thought that ICE would have had a total raid on them at the Maverick [T] station. They'd be hearing rumors about the [Revere] raid. ... I think by showing up and showing folks the reality — if there's a raid, there's a raid, and we haven't seen one. If there's an arrest, there's an arrest.

"I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think that in my heart [it is helping calm fears]."

On his live field reports reaching up to 20 times their average number of views:

"It just shows everybody, including our own El Mundo team, the amount of interest. You know, this has become such a daily, top-of-mind thing for us — for this group of people. And maybe someone listening to this today may not be able to relate, but if you live in East Boston, Chelsea, any one of these Gateway Cities — Lawrence — this is what everybody around you is talking about."