Prep work begins for ICE fight




Burlington - A special December Town Meeting authorized the expenditure of $10,000 to find out how strong a case Burlington can mount against the 10-year lease secured by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency of Homeland Security, for a 40,000-square-foot office building at 10 Executive Park.

The disclosure that undocumented aliens would be brought to the building for a period of one to two hours, and held in secure rooms, during which time they would be processed for deportation, brought a storm of protest around the heads of the Planning Board, which originally issued the special permit for the work to be done at the building, and the Board of Selectmen.

A committee of Town Meeting members, chaired by Paul Noonan, will meet on Jan. 17 to decide which of two attorneys, Peter Gossels or Daniel Gibson, will be retained.

In a recent e-mail, Noonan said, “The meeting is public and will be posted. At the conclusion of the meeting, I will appoint an attorney based on the committee’s recommendation, and that attorney will present to the [Town] meeting as a whole on January 28th.â€