By Brian Wright O’Connor
January 30, 2025 – Cascading headlines and news reports of federal raids around the country have left immigrant communities on edge and fueled viral rumors of imminent mass arrests in Boston.
Fears of federal officers dragging away handcuffed friends and family members and putting them into the deportation pipeline have blanketed the internet and social media platforms like WhatsApp in recent days.
Alarmist warnings of raids have notably proliferated in the wake of President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants in his first week in office.
El Mundo Boston set out yesterday morning to track down reports of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descending on public transit stations, popular shopping areas, and work sites.
Rumors of the crackdown have spread at lightning speed and have proven overblown but nonetheless potent.
One metric of the intensity of those fears is the number of views logged by La Hora del Café, El Mundo Boston’s morning livestream news and talk show, which is running an ongoing special series on immigration.
The program’s 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. broadcast normally draws several thousand real-time viewers and a total of 6,000 throughout the day. But yesterday’s show, featuring visits to sites of anticipated arrests, soared to over 143,000 views by nightfall.
Early morning visits to Blue Line stops in East Boston and Revere showed what some said was lighter-than-expected traffic, but no federal agents in bulletproof ICE vests were visible.
Social media posts about agents waiting to nab undocumented migrants at the Market Basket in Chelsea proved unfounded, but the rumors appeared to have depressed shopping activity at the popular grocery store, which happens to be located in view of the FBI’s regional headquarters.
Reports of ongoing ICE arrests on Havre Street in East Boston turned out to be an early-morning Boston Police Department gang unit action, with one suspect taken into custody.
A flurry of posts about a raid on a Revere construction site sent the El Mundo Boston team to 93 Bennington Street, where workers said they had heard repeated warnings about ICE sweeping up illegal migrants at the site.
“This is getting out of hand,” said one worker. “There is a very real danger that, with the amount of disinformation out there, someone is going to rush out and get into an accident. People are playing on their fears.”
In Boston, a series of ICE actions last week resulted in the arrests of eight individuals, seven of whom had extensive criminal records, according to ICE.
Other cities, especially Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, have seen a more heightened crackdown in the past week, with officials like U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and acting ICE Director Tom Homan accompanying agents—with TV crews in tow—on arrests in the field.
ICE has announced close to 5,000 arrests in the past week, with the one-day total hitting a record 1,179 on Monday.
According to NBC News, of those detained on Monday, just 613, or 52%, were considered “criminal arrests.” The others appeared to be “non-violent offenders or people who have not committed any criminal offense other than crossing the border illegally.”
Being undocumented is a civil, not a criminal, offense.
The large percentage of detainees without criminal records is likely to fuel worries—and sow further panic—among undocumented immigrants whose only violation is entering the country illegally.
