Lori Trahan

BURLINGTON — U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan visited the inside of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Burlington on Tuesday for the first time since President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown ramped up last year.

Trahan’s visit was prearranged with ICE and lasted about an hour and a half. While speaking with the media after leaving the building, Trahan said she would continue to push for ICE to face accountability for the agency’s actions over the last year, but she did not report continued poor conditions for detainees inside, which other members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation have in the past.

“Nothing I saw or heard today has persuaded me that Democrats should relent in our fight to rein in a president who has recklessly surged and increased funding to ICE,” said Trahan.

Nationally, Trahan said, the result of the increased funding to ICE has been that “we’ve seen hardworking people, in many cases without a criminal record, targeted and detained often without a signed judicial warrant and transported out of state into other detention facilities as fast as possible.”

“We’ve also seen children who have been arrested or detained to go after their parents. I think we can also agree that is never an acceptable enforcement practice,” said Trahan.

Her visit comes with a backdrop of a partial government shutdown primarily affecting the Department of Homeland Security, which carries a number of federal agencies, including ICE and the Transportation Safety Administration, under its umbrella. On Monday, ICE agents, who are still getting paid, started being deployed to airports across the country with the stated aim of supplementing the work of TSA employees, who are not getting paid during the partial shutdown.

Trahan said the unpaid employees of DHS agencies are “having their pay and their benefits used as leverage.”

“They are protecting an enforcement regime that this country is not behind,” said Trahan, referring to President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers who have resisted proposals from Democrats to address the shutdown as the impacts of burnout and a short-staffed TSA are seen in airports across the country.

“The president and congressional Republicans have had a very clear proposal in front of them from the jump,” said Trahan.

That proposal, she said, has been to fund DHS as a whole so those employees can get paid, but to not include ICE or Customs and Border Protection in that funding.

Tuesday was Trahan’s first visit to the Burlington ICE facility since it came under scrutiny last year amid reports of extremely poor conditions for detainees inside. Inside, she said she “did learn a lot” about the facility, but that she “will not stop demanding answers.”

She reported seeing normal “investigative work” being done in cubicles by employees inside, targeted toward immigrants with deportation orders and criminal pasts.

“I was told people are moved out of this facility very quickly. We talked about where people go, how men go to one place, children go to another and women go to others,” said Trahan. “But there weren’t many people in the holding cells we just walked through.”

While many employees inside are longtime employees who joined DHS in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Trahan said, there has been a surge of recent hiring within the department thanks to a significant increase in funding passed under the Trump administration.

“So we had a lot of questions about what happens when someone has no criminal record, what happens when someone is swept up in an operation and has no criminal wrongdoing, and those questions were answered,” said Trahan. “I think right now what is on display, the thing we have had the hardest time with, is the surge of resources that ICE has been granted in the past year has really increased the scope beyond the most violent criminals, the worst of the worst.”

Her visit also comes amid a transition in DHS, with former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s recent ouster from the position, and Monday’s Senate confirmation of Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to replace her.

“I think this administration has a pretty well known track record of hiring people who are unqualified for the positions they are in,” said Trahan when asked about Mullin’s appointment. “I served with Senator Mullin for one term. He has never overseen an agency or any organization with this many people. This is the largest domestic law enforcement agency in our country.”

Greater Assabet Indivisible Network board member Todd Palmer pressed Trahan about attempting to perform a future inspection of the facility unannounced. Trahan responded by citing recent court rulings by judges saying members of Congress can perform unannounced inspections, but said this visit was prearranged because she “wanted the ability to come in and we didn’t want any disruption at the door.”

“It worked out. I have to be honest, we were able to walk through the entire building. There was no door we asked to go in that they said ‘no,’” Trahan said. “If we have reason, whether there is a surge or other activity that warrants an unannounced visit, we know we have the obligation and the right to do that, and we will.”

The Burlington ICE facility has been the site of multiple weekly protests primarily on Wednesdays and Thursdays since rumors of the conditions inside began to surface last spring, with demonstrations drawing hundreds of people some weeks. There was little activity in front of the facility Tuesday, except for Toni Matloff of Saugus, Lydia Van Evera of Lexington, and Palmer.

Matloff said she and Van Evera had been protesting at the building for “Justice for All Thursdays,” which was organized by Palmer and GAIN, but around December they began to feel like standing there and holding signs was not enough.

“So Todd and I and Lydia all spoke, and we thought of doing food distribution directly to immigrants and we have been going ever since,” said Matloff.

As immigrants with appointments in the building leave, Matloff and Van Evera flag them down and offer them food items, and if there are children, age-appropriate books as well. They started only giving these things out on Thursdays, but in the weeks since, they have expanded to just about every weekday, even on days without protesters. That expansion was driven in part by the amount of donations they were receiving for their efforts.

“We have been getting a lot of donations that were just sitting in my house, basically. So we started on Thursdays, and we never expected to do beyond Thursdays,” said Matloff. “Then we were getting so many donations that we decided to add Friday to it.”

Now, Matloff said they are getting so many donations they are showing up to give it away until they run out again.

ICE and DHS did not respond to a request for comment from The Sun Tuesday.

Trahan is running for reelection this year for her seat in the Massachusetts 3rd Congressional District, with Gaige Clark as a challenger in the Democratic primary.