The 200 ICE detainees locked up in the South Bay House of Correction in Boston were moved out Friday weeks ahead of a deadline set by the Suffolk sheriff’s office.
A bus with the windows whited-out rolled in and then out of the jail in the South End on Friday. Sheriff prisoner transport vans from several different counties including Bristol County entered in through the mechanized gates and then left.
By the end of the day, all of the suspected illegal immigrants were gone, following the eviction notice Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins hit Immigration and Customs Enforcement with on Tuesday, said New England ICE Deputy Director Todd Michael Lyons.
“All of our other partners in law enforcement stepped up right away,” Lyons told the Herald, adding that the suspected illegal immigrants are now housed in Bristol County, Plymouth County and Franklin County, plus some jails in New Hampshire and Rhode Island — and some even farther away.
“Unfortunately, we had to move them far outside of New England,” Lyons said, making logistics for court proceedings, attorneys and the detainees’ families more difficult.
Lyons reiterated that this will make detention and removal operations more difficult, as now all detention takes place farther away from Boston and Logan International Airport.
“It’s an impediment now to our operations, we’ll be able to come back,” Lyons said.
Lyons said the eviction notice came suddenly on Tuesday, giving ICE 60 days before they’d be frozen out.
“We got it Tuesday with no clarification — just an email with the two-sentence termination notice attached,” Lyons said.
Tompkins’ office didn’t respond to a request for comment on Friday. He told the Herald earlier this week that this isn’t a political decision — he’s trying to free up space for female inmates, particularly those suffering from drug addiction.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the agency has paid Suffolk County about $117 million since 2003 to hold illegal immigrants facing deportation.
The eviction notice came as the relationship between state and federal officials has become seriously strained, with a district judge indicted on federal charges she allegedly helped an illegal immigrant slip out a back door of a Newton courthouse to evade immigration agents.
Also, Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins made headlines this year for instructing her staff to alert her to ICE presence near courthouses, and she and Middlesex DA Marian Ryan filed suit against the agency to forbid them from enforcement measures at Massachusetts courts.
ICE has become a political touchstone as President Trump has focused on increasing immigration enforcement, while many Democrats, including Massachusetts politicians such as U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, have called to abolish ICE.