An ICE action in Newton turns rough, and secrecy follows

Federal agents surrounded a silver Ford sedan on a quiet tree-lined street on the Watertown-Newton line Monday morning. Several neighbors shot video of the confrontation on Maple Street, as agents tried to get two men to step out of the car.

The impasse lasted about 20 minutes, neighbors said. Then, an agent smashed the passenger-side windows and unlocked the car doors, video footage reviewed by WBUR shows. Another agent handcuffed the passenger in the front seat.

The driver was dragged out and punched, then tackled after a struggle and pinned to the ground by five agents. He screamed out in pain, as one neighbor in the video shouted at the agents to stop.

There were few clues to the identities of the men who were arrested: A sign in the rear window of the Ford Focus advertised a masonry and painting company. Hanging from the rearview mirror was a toy boxing glove that said “Guatemala.”

That lack of public information has been a hallmark of many Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests: no publicly disclosed warrant or arrest record; no paper trail, as there is with local police; no response to requests for details from ICE or its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, on why the men were detained.

This level of secrecy is unlike how many other law enforcement agencies carry out arrests in this country. And the lack of disclosure by ICE fuels criticism that immigrants are being “disappeared” without due process — even in cases where those arrested face serious charges that might shed light on why they are targeted.

In an effort to learn the identities of the men arrested Monday, WBUR contacted police departments in Newton, Watertown and Waltham, reviewed court records and called people with ties to the driver. Police in the three cities said they were not involved in the arrests and referred further questions to Homeland Security.

Waltham court records show the owner of the masonry company advertised in the car is Kiender Lopez-Lopez. He was charged with assault and battery related to a domestic incident in 2020, and later with violating an abuse prevention order. Both charges were continued without a finding.

On Wednesday, 48 hours after the arrest, Lopez-Lopez's name appeared in ICE’s detainee database. The entry said he was being held at the Plymouth County Jail.

The arrest illustrates the uncertainty that frequently follows immigration arrests. Attorney Mahsa Khanbabai said ICE often spirits people away, leaving communities guessing about why people are detained. Unless family members, friends or neighbors reach out publicly, she said, it’s “hard to track ‘What happened to this person? Are their rights being protected?’ "

Khanbabai is an attorney for Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts doctoral student arrested by ICE in March. She said federal agents kept Öztürk incommunicado for 24 hours following her arrest, barring her from calling her lawyer as agents transported her across multiple state lines, ultimately taking her to a Louisiana detention center.

The information blackout meant Khanbabai had to guess where her client was, filing a habeas petition in Massachusetts to challenge Öztürk’s detention. But Öztürk had been moved to Vermont without notice by then; her location at the time of the filing has become central in the government’s legal battle to keep Öztürk in Louisiana.

A federal appeals court this week rejected the government’s argument, saying, “Any confusion about where habeas jurisdiction resides arises from the government’s conduct during the twenty-four hours following Öztürk’s arrest.”

The appeals court ordered the feds to return Öztürk to Vermont by next week for a hearing. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security indicated it plans to continue to fight the transfer.

ICE did not not respond to WBUR’s requests for comment on federal disclosure practices regarding immigrant detainees, which range from total silence to blasting images and allegations on Fox News and from the White House lawn. The agency’s acting Boston field office director, Patricia Hyde, in a recent interview on the Howie Carr Show, claimed that ICE regularly posts arrest details on social media.

“We have a Twitter account,” Hyde said. “It will show you daily arrests for all of New England. So that's the most effective way to not just hear that we arrested people, but to see exactly who it is that we arrested and what community we took them out of.”

ICE’s Boston X feed showed nothing about the arrest of the men in Watertown as of Thursday.

ICE has claimed in other cases that its rules are related to security concerns, and privacy for detainees. But Heather Yountz, a lawyer with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said it’s hard to take that at face value.

“ICE can't claim to be protecting the privacy of immigrants while kicking down doors and smashing car windows,” she said. “And ICE is quick to reveal personal data when it suits their interest.”

Yountz said top federal officials often post documents about immigrants to portray them as criminals. She said there's power in access to information — and withholding details can make it easier to carry out deportations.

She and other immigration lawyers believe ICE should be held to higher disclosure standards.

“If families had more information about who was arrested and where they were located earlier in the process, those families would be able to obtain information,” she said. “Attorneys would be able to know where their clients are.”