The arrests happen at car washes, traffic stops and court hearings.
Under President Donald Trump, federal immigration officials have dramatically expanded their efforts to identify, detain and deport immigrants they say are in the U.S. illegally.
Since the start of 2025, New England has seen a tenfold increase in the number of immigrants who were deported, compared to last year.
This big push requires the participation of federal, regional and local institutions -- something that’s been happening across New England over the past year.
In Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, county jails are holding ICE detainees. Regional airports handle ICE flights to prisons in other states.
Federal prisons, immigration courts and ICE administration offices in New England have taken on extra cases or new work.
Here's a map illustrating the growing immigration infrastructure in New England.
The arrests
Last year, between Jan. 20 and Dec. 2, 2024, ICE made 2,044 arrests in the Boston “area of responsibility,” a region that consists of Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, according to an ICE spokesperson.
During that same time period in 2025, the spokesperson said ICE made four times as many arrests – 8,848.
ICE officials have targeted people at their workplaces, including design companies, construction sites, restaurants, dairy farms and car washes. They’ve arrested people off the streets, at the airport, en route to the dentist, and outside their homes. They’ve also arrested people during scheduled check-in appointments with ICE and inside court houses. Minor infractions like a DUI can tip off ICE to make arrests.
The region has also seen organized ICE raids, like a four-day operation in Connecticut in August, during which 65 people were apprehended. In September, ICE’s “Operation Patriot 2.0” netted 1,400 arrests in Massachusetts.
U.S. Border Patrol also plays a big role in immigration arrests in New England, particularly in Maine. Agents from the Houlton Sector, which covers all of Maine, arrested 725 people during the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2025, a new record.
Some of the arrests in Maine have come through informal cooperation with state and local law enforcement. That was the case for a Maine carpenter from Brazil who was pulled over in May 2025 by a state trooper for an improperly-placed license plate and a missing plate light. The state trooper called Border Patrol to help verify the man’s documents, and he was taken into custody and later sent to an ICE detention facility in Texas. He was eventually released and is now back in Maine.
Some New England law enforcement agencies have officially partnered with ICE through a federal program that deputizes local officers to carry out federal immigration enforcement.
State police, county sheriffs and local police in New Hampshire began signing these 287(g) agreements in late February 2025 and were approved by ICE rapidly. That’s despite a statewide “fair and impartial” policing policy that prevents state police from stopping people only on the suspicion of their immigration status.
Of the 13 signed 287(g) agreements in New England, 12 are in New Hampshire and one is with the Massachusetts Department of Correction, according to ICE.
In Massachusetts, ICE arrests in local courthouses ballooned in 2025. In May, the Massachusetts Trial Court issued a new policy detailing how court staff should interact with ICE, though it hasn’t always been followed.
ICE is also developing new ways of identifying people to arrest. In several unassuming buildings outside Burlington, Vermont, a specialized intelligence hub for ICE known as the Law Enforcement Support Center is gathering information about immigration status and identity that is being used to make arrests around the country. It also processes tips.
The facility has been in Vermont since former Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy secured funding for it in 1994, and its work is expected to expand. ICE is looking to hire 100 more people to staff the tip line housed at the Williston, Vermont facility, the weekly newspaper Seven Days reported.
Williston is also home to a second ICE facility, the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center. In October, Wired reported that the agency was seeking to hire analysts to expand surveillance of social media to identify ICE targets.
Detention
Every state in New England except Connecticut has at least one facility that’s holding immigration detainees. These prisons and jails are owned and run through various entities, like county sheriffs, state and quasi public-owned companies, and the federal government.
Once arrested, it’s common for people to be taken to a detention facility in another part of New England, or outside the region.
For instance, Rosanne Ferreira-De Oliveira, a housekeeper and mother of four, was detained by ICE in Worcester, Massachusetts, but was sent to the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where she was held for five months.
Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested by ICE on the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, and taken by van to Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in Vermont, then flown to Louisiana via the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport, all within a 24-hour period, without having access to an attorney. She has since been released and has pending immigration and habeas cases.
ICE also has held people at a local processing center in an office building in Burlington, Massachusetts.
ICE also has held people at a local processing center in an office building in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Typically, people are transferred from there to a longer-term detention facility in a matter of hours. But beginning in May 2025, as the Trump administration ramped up arrests in Massachusetts and beds in regional detention centers filled up, the stays in Burlington got longer — more than a week in some cases.
Former detainees and immigration lawyers described conditions in the overcrowded holding rooms as "abysmal" and "inhumane." They say there are no beds, so people sleep on concrete floors or benches. Each holding room has one toilet that offers little privacy. Many said they weren't fed enough food, and women reported a shortage of menstrual products.
The conditions inside Burlington have sparked an outcry from the public, and people protest outside of the building several days a week. Elected officials have also been involved, pushing ICE for information about the number of people being detained and the conditions of their detention. In December, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. toured the building. He reported that conditions inside haven't changed much since his visit in June, though he said ICE seemed to be moving people through Burlington more quickly. In mid-December, activists were arrested on the property while delivering care packages to detainees there.
People in other parts of New England have been protesting ICE detention contracts as well.
In Maine, activists have been pushing commissioners to stop letting ICE detain people at the Cumberland County Jail in Portland.
In Vermont, the high-profile arrest in April 2025 of Moshen Mahdawi, a local resident and pro-Palestinian activist, led lawmakers and activists to question an agreement between the state’s Department of Corrections and federal immigration authorities. Gov. Phil Scott said the arrangement is preferable to sending people elsewhere, and the state renewed its contract with ICE in September.
Advocates in Massachusetts are working to prevent more agreements from being forged there. In November GBH News surveyed all counties in Massachusetts and the Department of Corrections. It found those with existing contracts - Plymouth County and the Department of Correction - plan to continue them, but other counties that replied to the survey said they have no interest.
In contrast, county officials in New Hampshire’s Rockingham County are considering a new detention contract there.
New England airports
New Englanders also have been debating the use of the region’s airports for transporting immigrants. Activists have held several protests and called for a boycott against budget airline Avelo in Connecticut and New Hampshire, after the airline agreed to charter deportation flights out of other states.
Activists have also scrutinized flights from Hanscom Field in Massachusetts and Portsmouth International Airport in New Hampshire.
On Dec. 15, Gov. Maura Healey demanded ICE stop using the Hanscom Field airport to transfer and deport individuals. In 2025, through November, 114 ICE flights departed from the airfield in Bedford, according to the ICE Flight Monitor from Human Rights First. In the first half of the year, the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office transported hundreds of detainees to Hanscom, to be flown to other ICE locations.
ICE has used the Portsmouth, New Hampshire airport, also known as Pease, off and on since July. The agency hasn’t said why or how many people are on these flights. But a handful of activists are counting the number of detainees boarding these flights, part of a wider effort to pressure local officials to stop the use of Pease as a deportation hub. Airport leadership says their hands are tied.
In Vermont, ICE has used commercial flights out of the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport to move detainees out of the state. Activists called on airport officials to block that activity, but officials determined ICE was entitled to use public areas of the airport, according to a legal memo. In October, activists told the news outlet VTDigger that ICE officials appeared to no longer be using the airport.
Immigration Courts
Immigration legal cases are heard in three courthouses in New England – in Boston and Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and in Hartford, Connecticut. The Chelmsford court has seen a host of firings of immigration judges, as the Trump administration has terminated many appointed under President Joe Biden.
With limited detention capacity in New England and a massive ramp-up in enforcement, ICE has transferred many detainees to other parts of the country. That has brought civil immigration cases into federal court, as lawyers have scrambled to file habeas corpus complaints to stop ICE from removing detainees from the state.
For instance, Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Öztürk, who was arrested in Massachusetts and transferred to Louisiana via Vermont, had her case heard by a U.S. district court judge in Vermont, where she had been briefly in custody when the habeas was filed.
Deportation
Mass deportation is the end goal of the Trump administration, and in the last year, the number of deportations in New England increased tenfold.
Between Jan. 20 and Dec. 2, 2024, ICE made 933 removals in New England. During that same period in 2025, the agency conducted 9,987 removals in New England, according to an ICE spokesman.
Some of the people deported include dairy farm workers in Vermont, a father of three in Chelsea, Massachusetts and a freshman at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, who was on her way home to visit family in Texas for Thanksgiving.
Others are choosing self-deportation. The family of a 13-year-old boy from Everett, Massachusetts, who was arrested in October 2025 and detained in Virginia, asked a judge if he could voluntarily return to Brazil. A family in Springfield, Massachusetts, was preparing to self-deport after receiving instructions to do so on sticky notes from ICE, before a judge issued a temporary emergency order that allowed them to stay. The father was eventually detained at an ICE check-in.
A Revere woman with family ties to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was arrested by ICE in November. Bruna Ferreira shares a son with Leavitt’s brother, Michael Leavitt. While Ferreira, a Brazilian national, is fighting deportation, her ex urged her to self-deport.
Some families have been making arrangements for guardianship in case parents are detained or deported.
Others who have been arrested by ICE have later been released.
New Hampshire resident Fabian Schmidt was arrested at Logan Airport in Boston and held at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Rhode Island for 2 months before he was released and returned home. Lucas Segobia, a carpenter, is back home in Searsport, Maine after being arrested by Border Patrol and held in Texas. Paul Dama, the manager of Suya Joint, an award-winning West African restaurant in Boston, was released after nearly 100 days in ICE custody in New Hampshire.
In July, ICE agents detained a high school student in New Haven, CT, drawing condemnation and pushback from his fellow students, local officials and community advocates. The student was detained in Louisiana, but was eventually able to fight his slated deportation to Guatemala.
He returned home to a celebratory rally from his community.
Note: This story may be updated.
These journalists contributed to this story: Ari Snider/Maine Public, Nirvani Williams/NEPM, Elizabeth Román/NEPM, Sarah Betancourt/GBH, Peter Hirschfeld/Vermont Public, Liam Elder-Connors/Vermont Public, Alicia Freese/Vermont Public, Lau Guzman/NHPR, Dan Barrick/NHPR, Roberto Scalese/WBUR, Simón Rios/WBUR, Miriam Wasser/WBUR, Beth Healy/WBUR, Daniela Doncel/Connecticut Public, Jeremy Bernfeld/Ocean State Media, Paul C. Kelly Campos/Ocean State Media, Raquel C. Zaldívar/New England News Collaborative, Cori Princell/New England News Collaborative
