Federal agents grabbed 18-year-old Jose Fabricio Paz after he walked through security at the Brighton courthouse last month.
Paz, an immigrant from Honduras, had come to court after being arrested on a charge of raping a minor. His defense attorney and court records show ICE detained him at the courthouse before his arraignment — an outcome Suffolk County prosecutors say cuts off victims’ paths to justice.
“When a child victim comes forward to report sexual abuse, they normally do so at a great personal cost,” said Allyson Portney, chief of the Child Protection Unit in the county’s district attorney’s office.
Inside Portney’s unit, prosecutors say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) actions are quietly unraveling child abuse cases — halting prosecutions midstream, eroding public safety and teaching young victims that speaking up was pointless.
Portney’s office investigates and prosecutes cases of child sexual assault, abuse and neglect, working with families from start to finish in both district and Superior Court. She said child victims and their families have been fearful to cooperate with her office due to immigration enforcement, their concerns heightened “about moving forward with criminal investigations because of ICE.”
“When a defendant is deported before the child has had the chance to be heard in court, that trust is shaken,” Portney said.
“It sends a message … that the child’s voice did not matter enough.”
Dozens of criminal cases in Suffolk County have been affected by defendants’ deportations or detention by ICE over the last year, with hundreds more disrupted because witnesses or victims were detained, according to the district attorney’s office.
ICE courthouse arrests in Massachusetts increased to nearly 400 in the first nine months of 2025. Comparatively, ICE arrested about 130 people during the same time period in 2024, according to data compiled by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.
When someone accused of a crime in the United States is deported before any conviction, the case usually freezes in legal limbo, Portney said. She explained that if a defendant is removed from the country, her office keeps the case technically open with an active warrant, but it effectively stalls.
Prosecutors can’t move forward unless the person — in reality, rarely — returns and is taken into custody again, therefore allowing the accused abuser to be possibly “free to further abuse other children.”
“We’re putting children in the position where they know that the person who raped them is now somewhere else in another country, not being held accountable, maybe not being punished and free to further abuse other children,” Portney said.
District Attorney Kevin Hayden brought up one of those languishing child abuse cases on Thursday, after Boston Mayor Michelle Wu signed an executive order in response to recent immigration enforcement actions in other states. Hayden brought up the child rape case against Paz.
Paz was charged with raping a 13-year-old girl at his Allston apartment on Jan. 12, according to a Boston police report.
Before Paz could even step inside in a Brighton District Court courtroom for his arraignment the next day, he was detained by ICE agents in the courthouse lobby and driven away in unmarked sedans, according to court records and his criminal defense lawyer, David Hagemeyer.
“Our primary job, in my office, is to maintain public safety by holding offenders accountable and securing justice for victims. These ICE tactics prevent us from doing that,” District Attorney Hayden said on Thursday.
“What’s more, fear of ICE has stopped victims and witnesses from even coming forward in cases to begin with,” he said, adding people are “not calling the police, not going to church” and “not doing all the things we need to do to live our lives.”
Paz was found cornered by members of the 13-year-old girl’s family in his Allston apartment when Boston police arrived at around 11 a.m. on Jan. 12, the report read. Paz’s brother was at the courthouse the next day and witnessed ICE agents take him, Hagemeyer said, just after he stepped through the metal detectors.
As of Feb. 5, Hagemeyer — a criminal defense lawyer from Braintree with more than 30 years experience — has no idea where Paz is, nor if he will make his next court appearance on March 3. MassLive was unable to locate Paz in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System.
