ICE restarts detainee flights out of Hanscom airport

Immigration authorities have resumed using Hanscom Field airport in Bedford to fly detainees to other states, as they pursue a new enforcement surge in Massachusetts.

Human Rights First, a nonprofit that tracks ICE flights, has logged at least five trips to Hanscom over the past week. The activity comes two months after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it stopped using the airport, located 20 miles northwest of Boston.

In June, WBUR reported that ICE had moved hundreds of detainees through Hanscom since President Trump took office. At that time, local activists complained about the ICE flights. Many of the immigrants were held at the Plymouth County jail and then transferred to the airport.

The Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the only jail in Massachusetts with a contract to hold people for ICE, transported more than 40 detainees to Hanscom in the past week, according to spokeswoman for the office, Karen Barry.

Federal authorities have not publicly disclosed how many additional people in custody were taken to Hanscom by private contractors or from other facilities, like its office in Burlington.

An ICE spokesman confirmed to WBUR that the agency has restarted the flights in Hanscom to support its latest crackdown on alleged immigration violations in Massachusetts.

“Flying aliens out of Hanscom allows ICE to move detainees quickly from the intake center at Burlington to a detention center once they have been processed,” the spokesman, James Covington, said in a statement.

ICE  has a contract to house up to 526 people at the Plymouth County jail, but its larger detention facilities are in other states.

Barbara Katzenberg, a Lexington town meeting member and a representative on the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission, said she believes the flights will spark more protests.

“There are a lot of very interested activists in this area who are unhappy with the involvement of ICE,”  Katzenberg said. She expects the topic may come up at the airport advisory commission’s next meeting on Tuesday.

The government resumed the Hanscom flights to “support Operation Patriot 2.0,” according to the ICE spokesman. That's what the agency is calling its latest enforcement wave in Massachusetts, following “Operation Patriot,” when federal authorities arrested nearly 1,500 people here in May.

The Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Hanscom, has previously said ICE does not need the state agency's permission to use the facility and does not alert the airport when it lands flights there. ICE typically uses private charter planes for the flights.