Child left alone along street after ICE detains adult, Massachusetts video shows
A boy was left alone on a Massachusetts city street by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after they detained an adult, according to a city councilor who’s speaking out about a video she recorded of the incident.
The child is seen in the footage along a sidewalk on Felton Street in Waltham on May 4 — without the adult who had been accompanying him moments earlier, Waltham City Councilor Colleen Bradley-MacArthur told WBZ-TV.
A law enforcement officer wearing a face mask covering his mouth and nose approaches the boy as he stands by himself, the video shows. The officer is seen holding a phone to his ear as he appears to speak to the child.
“He looks about my son’s age,” Bradley-MacArthur said of the boy in an interview with WBZ-TV. “It makes me feel sick to my stomach as a mom, as a human being.”
Bradley-MacArthur and ICE didn’t immediately return McClatchy News’ requests for comment May 14.
Bradley-MacArthur was outside with volunteers on a neighborhood watch walk when she began filming in Waltham on May 4, she told NBC10 Boston.
The volunteers ultimately took the child to his home because ICE agents left without trying to help him, according to Bradley-MacArthur, the outlet reported.
She said she saw multiple officers wearing masks, describing how they used their vehicles to block the street, NBC10 Boston reported.
When the city councilor asked a law enforcement officer what agency he belonged to, the officer wouldn’t respond and instead said, “You stay here and don’t interfere,” Bradley-MacArthur recalled.
The officer’s warning can be heard in her video published by CBS News.
Waltham is about a 10-mile drive west from Boston. The Boston area and beyond, during the first week of May, has seen a rise in arrests made by ICE, according to local advocacy organizations, including the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network, WGBH reported.
An ICE spokesperson told the radio station that for “reasons of officer safety, ICE does not comment on ongoing operations.”
On March 24, ICE announced 370 people accused of illegally living in Massachusetts were detained by the agency in a span of six days, between March 18 to March 23.
Commenting on the “enhanced” operation, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia H. Hyde said in a statement that ICE “targeted the most dangerous alien offenders in some of the most crime-infested neighborhoods in and around Boston.”
Woman detained at Boston airport
In late April, several Massachusetts-based advocacy groups banded together in support of a 70-year-old Worcester resident apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol at the Boston Logan International Airport after a trip to Zimbabwe, McClatchy News previously reported.
The organizations denounced Ruth Mufute’s detention at the airport on April 29, saying she has permanent legal status. She is a member of one of the groups, the Student Clinic for Immigrant Justice, its executive director, Jonathan Goldman, told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
In a statement to McClatchy News on May 2, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said Mufute was arrested “on a warrant for wire fraud and conspiracy issued by the (U.S. Agency for International Development) Office of Inspector General.”
The USAID OIG has accused Mufute of a fraud scheme related to former work in South Africa while employed by a nonprofit located in North Carolina.
After Mufute appeared in Boston federal court for initial proceedings April 30, a federal judge released her, records show. She’s been ordered to appear in federal court in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the afternoon of May 15.
U.S. immigration actions criticized
In Waltham, local advocacy group Indivisible Waltham is holding a one-hour demonstration on May 15, titled “Hands Off our Community!” in response to recent ICE activity.
The group is a part of the larger nationwide organization Indivisible.
In a statement to McClatchy News on May 14, Elizabeth Hoffecker, a volunteer organizer with Indivisible Waltham, accused ICE agents of using “unconstitutional and needlessly brutal tactics” in the city, including “refusing to identify themselves, wearing full face coverings, refusing to produce valid warrants, breaking into private spaces and destroying property, separating parents from children, and beating suspects up.”
“Regardless of the legal status of the Waltham residents who ICE has detained and regardless of whether they are suspected of criminal activity or not, they are guaranteed due process under the Constitution,” Hoffecker said.
“Depriving them of that is an attack on all our Constitutional rights, which is why it is so critical that we refuse to normalize these tactics and that we demand that our local police and elected officials protect us from any agents — ICE or otherwise — who are operating outside the law,” Hoffecker added.
On May 8, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was criticized over recent immigration enforcement actions by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., during a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.
DHS is the federal agency that oversees ICE.
“You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, have constitutional and statutory rights when they reside in the United States,” Murphy, a member of the committee, said to Noem.
This story was originally published May 14, 2025 at 12:02 PM with the headline "Child left alone along street after ICE detains adult, Massachusetts video shows."
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