ICE has proved they have no issue separating families to send a message. That message started clear, but has become undeniably convoluted over the last few months. As President Trump continues to issue orders and offer incentives, ICE’s legal actions become increasingly blurred. And now, because of this, a Massachusetts mother has been torn from her 13-year-old son without cause.
In a video shared on Reddit, one man tells the chaotic story of what’s happening in Everett right now. After receiving a phone call from the police, the woman, a local asylum-seeker who is here legally, was told she needed to come down to the station. The police had gotten a phone call tipping them off that her 13-year-old son was allegedly making threats at his school. The police called this tip “credible” and claimed to find the boy in possession of a weapon upon bringing him in. This fact remains to be seen, and no confirmation has been reported.
This is where the situation becomes messy. After more than an hour of waiting, the woman was told her son was no longer at the police department. He’d been detained by ICE and was sent to a detention center in Virginia. Although city officials claim the arrest was not based on immigration status, the events that followed suggest otherwise. Since his detention, his mother has been receiving phone calls from her son, hysterical and afraid.
The man who made the call-to-action video ends it by saying, “This isn’t some political debate. This is about a mother who can’t hug her son, who doesn’t even know when she’ll hear from him again.” The user who posted the video to Reddit accused ICE of “secretly kidnapping” her son, implying that this was the real reason for the arrest. One user commented on the video, saying, “This is how you get vigilantism and insurgency.”
