Residents outraged by ICE arrest, police response

By Beth Germano

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    WORCESTER, Massachusetts (WBZ) — Police say two people were arrested when a crowd of people tried to interfere with an ICE operation in Worcester on Thursday. The incident has generated a lot of anger in the city.

Crowds swarmed around federal agents on Eureka Street as they took a woman into custody.

A witness describes what she saw. “The mom as she was being detained too, she was screaming, I don’t know if she was being hurt as she was handcuffed, but she was truly screaming,” Dali RaRocha said. “Those are the screams I have truly engrained in my ears right now.”

Residents demand answers

Another relative, believed to be her daughter, was flailing in front of the ICE vehicle in a scene that rapidly grew into chaos in front of agents, some masked, and witnesses saying they had no answers about the arrest.

“We were all asking for a warrant, they didn’t answer at first, and then eventually just said this is a warrantless arrest when they were shoving them into the vehicle,” said witness David Webb.

Worcester police say they moved in to deescalate the situation, but the response has outraged the community, some saying they question which side the police were on.

“We saw both federal and Worcester officers descend on a family with a level of aggression that you would use when apprehending someone who is known to be dangerous and carrying weapons,” said Fred Taylor of the Worcester NAACP.

School committee candidate arrested

Two others were arrested, including school committee candidate Ashley Spring, who is charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery as she allegedly threw an unknown liquid at responding officers. The daughter of the woman taken into custody by ICE was also arrested.

At some point DaRocha took the infant of another family member into her arms to help.

“What I felt is indescribable, because such an innocent baby that is going to be impacted by separation of family members,” DaRocha said.

“Get out of our city”

City leaders are calling for accountability and an investigation into the response.

“The message for ICE is get out of our city,” Worcester City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj said.

“Our local police is not tasked to protect ICE, they’re here to protect the people and they should behave that way,” Taylor said. It is not clear who the arrested woman is or where she was taken.

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