Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents left a 12-year-old boy stranded on a sidewalk after a raid in Waltham, Massachusetts.
According to WBZ News, a CBS affiliate in Boston, ICE agents were seen leaving the boy by himself after conducting an arrest on Felton Street over the weekend.
Neighborhood watch volunteers who patrol the streets notified the boy of his rights and walked him back to his home.
“If we weren’t there, he would’ve just been left on the sidewalk,” Waltham City Councilor Colleen Bradley-MacArthur, told the outlet. “He looks about my son’s age. It makes me feel sick to my stomach as a mom, as a human being.”
Bradley-MacArthur said agents were closely monitoring the volunteers’ actions.
“They rolled their windows down and had their cellphones and were recording us and taking pictures of us,” she said. At point an agent drove his vehicle onto the sidewalk where Bradley-MacArthur stood recording their actions.
“I could tell what he was doing. He was trying to intimidate me with his car,” she said.
Video Bradley-MacArthur took shows the agent leaving his vehicle wearing sunglasses and black headgear covering half his face. When she asked him what agency he was with, he told her, “You need to stand back and not interfere.”
The councillor told him she was just observing, which she is legally allowed to do.
The Waltham Police Department issued a statement saying they were not involved in the incident.
“The Waltham Police Department is not allowed to interfere with or disrupt federal law enforcement operations. While the Waltham Police Department does comply with judicial warrants and court orders, the members of WPD do not act as agents of ICE,” the department said.
“The Waltham Police Department only communicates with ICE in cases involving serious criminal offenses, such as violent crimes, consistent with state law.”
The incident comes less than a week after two people were arrested in Worcester, Massachusetts after residents surrounded an ICE vehicle in an attempt to stop agents from taking a woman, clinging to her one-year-old child, into custody.
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