What’s LUCE, the group monitoring ICE sightings throughout Mass.?

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“If you saw a kidnapping happening in daylight, and you have no idea who it was, what happened, what agency, everybody’s living in fear and panic,” one organizer said. “We just believe that that’s not any way for anybody to live, but at least people deserve to know what’s happening.”

As federal immigration agents have swarmed the Boston area, a coalition of community organizers aim to keep neighbors informed about the hard-to-track federal agencies with just a phone call.

“We are seeing this formation as an organization of people that are committed to the idea that no one gets left behind, and that we’re all moving together,” said Jaya Savita, the director of the Asian Pacific Islanders Civic Action Network. The group is one of more than a dozen groups in the state working with the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts.

LUCE, which comprises multiple grassroots organizations, operates a hotline to report and verify sightings of immigration agents in the state.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

‘I felt like they were abducting somebody’

Lori Fitzpatrick was driving through Plymouth when she saw someone being put in an unmarked vehicle by masked men. She said she immediately pulled over and began recording with her phone.

“I was afraid, because these men didn’t look like police officers. They had masks on. They had weapons, and they were taking somebody off the street,” Fitzpatrick told Boston.com. “I felt like they were abducting somebody, and nobody would know because it was so early and there was nobody outside.”

The men, who she presumed to be ICE agents, told her to stop recording, that they would arrest her, and to move. But, Fitzpatrick said she knew her rights after attending an information session with the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network. 

“I can videotape. I can ask the police or the federal agents the nature of what they’re doing. You can even go so far as to call them names,” Fitzpatrick said. “They asked me to move across the street. I did move across the street, but I can physically be there.”

Fitzpatrick then reported the incident through the LUCE hotline, hoping to bring more awareness to what happened in Plymouth. 

“We have no idea who the person was that was taken,” Fitzpatrick said. “They could have taken me that morning, and nobody would have known.”

As LUCE tracks arrests, ICE remains tight-lipped

LUCE has become more and more prominent as people are, sometimes aggressively, detained across Massachusetts. The hotline garnered public attention when Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested by masked ICE agents in Somerville. Verifiers with LUCE, who are trained to document and observe arrests, arrived just a few minutes late to the scene, said Danny Timpona, an organizer with the nonprofit Neighbor 2 Neighbor. 

Timpona was a LUCE dispatcher on the call when community members reported what happened. When LUCE verifiers arrive at the scene of an arrest, they operate within the First Amendment, meaning they are limited to “basic documentation and witnessing,” Timpona said.

“The caller was saying, ‘someone’s being kidnapped, someone’s being kidnapped, someone’s being kidnapped’,” Timpona said. “However, the dispatchers stayed in the area and knocked doors, and because they were knocking doors, talking to people, that’s ultimately where we got the footage.”

That footage of the arrest, showing plainclothed agents wearing hoods and caps, made national headlines. Timpona said the footage gave the hotline some publicity, but “it’s really the door to door work that we do that is in our community because these are community groups.”

Even some local officials are using the hotline and the coalition’s information to keep their constituents apprised of ICE activity. Boston City Councilor Liz Breadon, who represents Allston and Brighton, has repeatedly shared LUCE’s information on social media, writing most recently last week that ICE activity was at a high in Allston-Brighton.

“If you saw a kidnapping happening in daylight, and you have no idea who it was, what happened, what agency, everybody’s living in fear and panic,” Timpona said. “We just believe that that’s not any way for anybody to live, but at least people deserve to know what’s happening.”

Amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, and a surge of ICE activity in Massachusetts specifically, ICE has remained largely tight-lipped about who is being arrested and when. The federal agency said that nearly 1,500 people were arrested during a monthlong operation in May, although they shared few specifics and no names of those arrested. Before the agency touted those numbers, LUCE was aware of more than 400 detentions last month, the group shared on Instagram. 

Timpona said the hotline could receive 300 calls daily during that time.

The agency’s Boston office does share information regarding the detention of convicted sex offenders and detainees accused of crimes against children or other serious crimes. But, many detentions that would ultimately become high-profile events — including those of a Brazilian mother in Worcester, a Guatemalan man in New Bedford, and a high school student in Milford — weren’t publicly addressed by the agency until after public outcry. 

“Your community members are being kidnapped, and families might not even know,” Timpona said. “Can we get closer to a reality? Then if you can get into a reality, you can find what are the solutions to support each other. But without a reality, there’s nothing.”

What does LUCE do?

As seen in videos and anecdotes of many arrests, it’s often near impossible to even identify ICE as the arresting agency. The Milford High School junior was apparently arrested by men in masks, who pulled up in unmarked SUVs, his coach told Boston.com. 

Part of the coalition’s mission is to verify ICE sightings across the state by dispatching “trained verifiers” to scenes, Savita said. A verifier will talk with local businesses, speak to anyone on scene, and try to find video evidence if someone was taken, she said.

Verifiers are told to look out for “suspicious looking vehicles,” Savita said, with tinted windows in loitering cars, which are generally unmarked or “vaguely licensed” cars. Timpona said vehicles are licensed to a variety of states due to the surge and noted that agents could have vests from the FBI, ATF, or other agencies.

Jillian Phillips, a trained volunteer verifier for LUCE who works as the director of the Office of New Americans in Worcester, said the hotline mostly allows verifiers to get to scenes, sometimes after the arrest, and facilitate support for families.

LUCE previously posted more regularly about ICE sightings on Instagram, Phillips said, but “our focus isn’t to spend energy posting online, because that doesn’t really help anybody.”

Mutual aid mostly comes from organizations already established in communities, such as hers, while LUCE’s goal is to “verify, observe, and alert the community.” Alerting the community of sightings and their rights happens during on-the-ground canvassing with neighbors and families after a verified sighting, Phillips said.

“We have communication outside of the verification calls, so it’s just creating a community network of people, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s LUCE. I would just say that’s community collaboration,” Phillips said.

The hotline operates from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Haitian Creole. LUCE is actively looking for people who speak Vietnamese, Chinese, Nepali, Bengali, Cape Verdean Kriolu, and Khmer, their website says.

“We’re building from Worcester to New Bedford to Gloucester to Lowell to Lawrence,” Timpona said. “You have neighbors who care about each other, who are seeing really crazy things, whether it’s windows being broken, people being dragged from cars, vehicles being surrounded by five unmarked vehicles, it has an impact on everybody.”