Immigration office moving to Burlington, raising fears
By Maria Sacchetti and Matt Viser, Globe Staff | November 11, 2007

Federal immigration officials are planning to move the New England headquarters for dealing with illegal immigrants from downtown Boston to a Burlington office park next month, stirring concern among area residents who have been caught off guard by the move.

The new facility would be located in a two-story, 45,000-square-foot building near the Burlington Mall, and 98 percent of its use will be administrative, said Bruce Chadbourne, field director for detention and removal operations in New England for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But the building will include four rooms with doors that lock, for holding illegal immigrants while they are processed, Chadbourne said. As many as 40 people could be held at a time, 10 per room. Chadbourne said he did not anticipate having that many at once.

The holding rooms will be used to fingerprint detainees and record their biographical information, which takes one to two hours, Chadbourne said. Detainees would not be held overnight, he said, and would be transferred to county jails and other local facilities.

"There are no beds in that facility," Chadbourne said. "We are not in the detention business in New England."

Illegal immigrants generally would be processed from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, he said. Some of the people who undergo processing could be criminals, but he said the building will have proper security. In 20 years, Chadbourne said, he has not had a detainee escape.

Still, local residents, many of whom learned of the move only last week, worry about the safety of transporting criminals through their town. While federal officials say there are no current plans to permanently house detainees, residents are concerned that it one day could be expanded.

"We don't want to have a jail in our town; we don't want armored vehicles transporting people," said Barbara L'Heureux, a Burlington resident who lives about a mile from the site. "I don't like the idea of criminals being transported in my town, past my child's bus stop. As a homeowner, you have to wonder if this would affect property values."

Burlington residents met yesterday with US Representative John Tierney and are trying to find out whether there are ways to fight the project.

In 2003, the federal agency explored whether to relocate its regional immigration headquarters to City Square in Charlestown.

Residents and neighborhood groups, as well as Mayor Thomas M. Menino, opposed the project, and it was ultimately derailed by local zoning regulations.

The Burlington Planning Board and the Board of Selectmen approved plans about a year ago for minor engineering changes to the building, although some local officials say they were not aware of the four holding rooms.

"Nobody zeroed in on that aspect until recently," said Albert L. Fay Jr., chairman of the Board of Selectmen. "Maybe we're making too big of a thing about it; maybe not. But we're going to meet with ICE, and we're putting together a list of questions."

Chadbourne said his office has similar holding rooms at its current headquarters in the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building downtown.

The agency decided about a year ago to move its headquarters because the size of its staff has grown over the years as the federal government boosted agency resources. ICE will maintain its separate investigations division and other offices in downtown Boston, where the federal immigration court is also located.

"We just don't have enough space," Chadbourne said "We don't have enough parking. We just outgrew the Kennedy."

The building in Burlington will be the first freestanding ICE office building in Massachusetts, he said. ICE does not have its own detention facility in New England.

Chadbourne said officials selected Burlington because the owner of the office building bid on the project.

Other ICE offices are in Hartford; Providence; Manchester, N.H.; St. Albans, Vt.; and Portland, Maine.

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