Two Arlington residents were among four people charged Tuesday after they tried unsuccessfully to deliver care packages to detainees held at the Burlington U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
Roger Rosen and Eric Segal, both town residents, joined Sabine von Mering and the Rev. Fred Small, who were arrested by Burlington police officers.
“We want those who are detained to know that they are not forgotten, not now and not in any season,” the Rev. Sarah Lusche told GBH News. She is the senior minister at Old Cambridge Baptist Church and a licensed clinical social worker who was present when the four were arrested. “That’s what today was about — attempting to care for these members of our community who are being detained without due process by this administration’s regime of immigration terror.”
Lusche said the packages contained food, juice, hats, bedrolls and menstrual products. The latter two items, she said, were in response to media reports of detainees sleeping on concrete floors, and in the case of menstruation, “being made to sit in their own blood.”
“They were then told that they needed to leave the property and the group, very calmly and peacefully, said they were going to stay and wait there until they were able to deliver the packages,” she said.
The Burlington Police Department confirmed to various media outlets that the four were arrested for trespassing and disturbing the peace on Tuesday at 11:15 a.m.
The four were among a group of about 20 who had gathered at the ICE facility, near the Burlington Mall. “All four were told repeatedly to disburse from the front entrance and refused to do so after multiple attempts,” Police Chief Thomas Browne told GBH. “They knew they would be arrested and ultimately were, and then booked at our facility.”
According to The Boston Globe, an officer wrote in the police report: “All four were directly in front of the main doors reading from a piece of paper. I repeated my advisement to move and Segal, Small, Von Mering and Rosen refused to do so.”
Segal and Rosen said the four did not block the entrance, citing photos they provided.
According to a police, The Globe reported: “DHS ICE would not take any property or supplies due to not being able to properly vet everything.”
Rosen has worked with families from Haiti and El Salvador in the United States and is a climate organizer. Segal is a retired tech executive who is known for helping immigrants. Von Mering is a climate activist, mother and naturalized citizen. Small left parish ministry in 2015 and is active in human rights advocacy.
“The irony of the disturbing the peace charge is lurid,” Rosen told YourArlington. “ICE, which violently disturbs the peace of every community it targets, is not held accountable for the violent cruelty of its unconstitutional abductions, while those who peacefully bring baskets of food and necessities to our immigrant sisters and brothers in need in the holiday season are swiftly arrested and handcuffed.
In a statement reported by GBH, Small wrote: “Masked ICE agents abducted Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk less than a mile from my home. Jesus told us to welcome the stranger. Instead, ICE is brutalizing our neighbors with wanton cruelty. In this Christmas season, I want to light a candle of kindness and compassion.”
“The blatant physical and emotional cruelty of ICE operations demands that we step outside our comfort zone to object,” Rosen wrote. “Our attempt to deliver these necessities to our immigrant brothers and sisters is a recognition of their humanity and their right to be treated with kindness and respect.”
Immigrants that have been detained and released from the Burlington processing center have shared reports of crowded cells, as well as lack of access to on-site medical attention and medication.
Most immigrants detained in the state go through the facility. Some high-profile stays included Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, an 18-year-old Milford high school student detained for six days and many of the immigrant employees of Allston Car Wash. One man, Dairo Preciado, said he slept on an air mattress that felt half-inflated so he could feel “metal bars under his back” and cried as he spoke of his experience there.
“Masked ICE agents abducted Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk less than a mile from my home,” Small wrote. “Jesus told us to welcome the stranger. Instead, ICE is brutalizing our neighbors with wanton cruelty. In this Christmas season, I want to light a candle of kindness and compassion.”
“The blatant physical and emotional cruelty of ICE operations demands that we step outside our comfort zone to object,” Rosen wrote. “Our attempt to deliver these necessities to our immigrant brothers and sisters is a recognition of their humanity and their right to be treated with kindness and respect.”
Immigrants that have been detained and released from the Burlington processing center have shared reports of crowded cells, as well as lack of access to on-site medical attention and medication.
The building opened in 2007 and was approved under the town’s zoning code to temporarily hold immigrants for only a few hours. But the increase of immigrant detentions across Massachusetts has yielded greater numbers of people being brought to the center to be processed, and many of them have remained there for days, or even weeks.
U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton and Sen. Ed Markey have visited the facility, calling on the agency to improve conditions there and allow immigrants to meet their attorneys, family and clergy in-person.
A group of protesters, including some from Arlington, has been showing up Wednesdays since last spring.
Representatives from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security has not responded to requests for comment about this case and what the policy for such packages is a Burlington ICE.
This story was published Dec. 19, 2025.
