Police arrested a Brandeis professor, a Unitarian minister and two others on Tuesday as they tried to deliver “care packages” to detainees at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Massachusetts, The Boston Globe reported.
Fred Small, 73, Eric Segal, 68, Roger Rosen, 75, and Sabine von Mering, 58, have all been charged with disturbing the peace and trespassing out of Woburn District Court, Burlington Police Chief Thomas Browne confirmed to MassLive on Wednesday.
A larger group went to the ICE facility at 1000 District Ave. in Burlington Tuesday morning bringing food, clothing and bedrolls, but were told when they arrived that they would not be allowed to deliver the items, the Globe reported. The four who were arrested were taken into custody after they refused to move away from the facility’s entrance.
Small is the minister for climate justice at Arlington Street Church — a Unitarian Universalist church in downtown Boston, according to his website. Sabine von Mering is the director of the Center for German and European Studies and the chair of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at Brandeis University, according to the school’s website.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.
Rev. Sarah Lusche, a member of the group who wasn’t arrested, told the Globe they’d become concerned about the detainees in Burlington in response to recent reports of poor conditions at the facility. The group “wanted to deliver these care packages in person as expressions of care for people in our community,” she said.
The Burlington Police Department report on the incident stated that “ICE would not take any property or supplies due to not being able to properly vet everything,” the Globe reported.
“They were then told that they needed to leave the property, and the group, very calmly and peacefully, said they were going to stay and wait there until they were able to deliver the packages,” Lusche told the newspaper.
A worker at the facility soon reported to police that “approximately twenty people were blocking the main entrance,” the police report states, according to the Globe. The responding officer asked the group to move away from the front entrance, and everyone cooperated except for the four who were arrested.
The police report states that Mark Anzelmo, who runs the facility, asked officers to remove the four from ICE property, the Globe reported. Those standing in front of the building’s entrance were given multiple warnings before being taken into custody and transported to the police station for booking.
“They charged us with trespassing and disturbing the peace,” von Meering told the newspaper. “To me, my peace is disturbed because this facility is operating the way it is.”
Burlington police previously arrested three protesters at the facility in September, according to the department. The protesters similarly refused to leave the property and were charged with trespassing.
