A number of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Plymouth County Correctional facility and potentially other detention centers in New England were transferred on a flight to New Mexico in early February.
It is the first large-scale proof that the new Trump administration is transferring scores of detainees out of New England as part of its ongoing effort to deport immigrants, a key campaign promise.
A flight on the privately chartered Eastern Air Express, which contracts with the agency, left from Bedford, Massachusetts after 1 a.m. on Feb. 2. On it, according to multiple sources, were about 40 ICE detainees.
It ended up in Albuquerque after multiple stops, according to Tom Cartwright, a national immigration advocate who independently tracks and documents ICE Air flights domestically and internationally. ICE Air Operations is the general term for flights chartered by the agency, but the agency subcontracts with multiple private charter flight companies.
Plymouth County Sheriff’s office’s media representative referred all questions to ICE. ICE didn’t return requests for comment to confirm the transfers, or why the transfers took place. The facility is contracted with ICE through 2028 to house immigrant detainees.
The Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network, or BIJAN, first heard of the flight last week from advocates in New Mexico. The organization, which works with detained immigrants at Plymouth county and their families, confirmed that several of the individuals they were helping had been transferred to Torrance County Detention Center in Estancia, New Mexico.
“It’s very disruptive for families and lawyers and individuals,” said the Rev. Annie Gonzalez, a volunteer for the network. “It’s extremely disruptive trying to get used to a new system. And certainly you cannot receive visits anymore from loved ones if that was possible before,” she said, adding that legal access far from where they’ve originally been can be difficult for detainees, and that often, no one knows where they’ve been taken to for several days.
Such was the case for Nery Estuardo Oliveros Godoy, who was arrested last fall for operating a vehicle without a license in New Hampshire. His girlfriend Angela Gonzalez told GBH News he was released with a fine and ICE picked him up in December. He was eventually transferred to Plymouth’s detention facility.
The 35-year-old had been undocumented and was working in paving to send funds back to his daughter in Guatemala, who has a heart condition and needs an expensive operation, Gonzalez said. The arrest and now the transfer, she said in Spanish, derailed his life.
“They went in chains with feet chained to their seatbelts like delinquents,” she said, adding that her partner said they weren’t able to use a bathroom for hours.
There were six days where she didn’t know where Oliveros Godoy was. “I called ICE, no one picked up, I called 10 times, but the automation says to just wait. No one tells you anything,” she said.
This is not the first time local detainees have been transported to border states. During the Trump, Biden and Obama administrations, detainees would occasionally be sent to Pennsylvania or Texas, a few at a time, due to bed space limitations in New England.
Locally, people are transferred to New Hampshire or Rhode Island detention facilities, but never in this large a number.
During the new Trump administration, GBH News first covered the case of Lucas Dos Santos Amaral, an undocumented man with no criminal record, who was detained at a traffic stop in Marlborough, and sent to Plymouth. He has since been transferred to Karnes County Residential Center in Texas.
