ICE flights move from Hanscom to Portsmouth

A Massachusetts state police car pulled up to a crowd of about 30 protesters who stood along the roundabout that intersects Old Bedford Road and Hanscom Road on Saturday afternoon.

“Do you all want some water bottles?” he asked kindly after slowing his car to a stop next to the crowd. It was early afternoon and the temperature was creeping above 90 degrees. 

He asked the protesters what they were standing in opposition of. 

“We’re protesting Signature Aviation servicing ICE flights,” a protester explained. Signature Aviation, the world’s largest provider of airfield operation services, has a base at Hascom Airfield and services planes that come through the airport. Those services include de-icing the planes, fueling them, and wheeling staircases to planes so passengers can enter and exit them safely. 

Since Donald Trump took office in January, hundreds of ICE detainees from the Boston area and beyond have been taken to Hanscom, where they have been put on planes bound for states with large detention centers, like Louisiana and Texas. 

“The least we can do is say that Signature Aviation should not be profiting from fueling the jets that carry detainees all over the country and then on for deportation,” Stephan Bader, a Concord resident who protested on Sunday, told the Observer. “They’re making money off human hardship.” 

Signature Aviation did not reply to LexObserver’s request for comment in time for publication. 

The police officer broke the news to the protesters that ICE detainees are no longer being flown out of Hanscom. 

“They moved them up to Pease in Portsmouth,” he explained.

The last plane that flew ICE detainees out of Hanscom left the local airfield on Sunday, July 13, the policeman told the crowd as he unloaded water bottles for them from a cooler. Since then, ICE detainees have been flown out of Portsmouth International Airport at Pease in Portsmouth, NH. That airport is bigger, the policeman explained.

Asked what he thinks about detainees being flown out of Portsmouth instead of Hanscom, Keith Olcott, a Maynard resident who was protesting on Saturday, told the Observer “it feels like par for the course.”

“I think we’re going to end up traveling further and end up protesting in Portsmouth,” he said. “We’re at a turning point. We have to keep fighting right now, all the time.”

The protesters continued to spread their messages despite learning that ICE detainees were no longer being flown out of Hanscom. 

“Raising awareness of the different companies, whether it’s hotels or businesses like this, that are enabling ICE, will help more people hold more people accountable,” Barbara Katzenberg, a Lexington resident and Town Meeting member, told the Observer at the protest. “It’s difficult to hold Kristi Noem accountable, but I think a company like Signature might wish this won’t be what they’re known for.”

In addition to condemning Signature Aviation for servicing planes that fly ICE detainees out of the state, the protesters shared messages opposing Trump’s general deportation policies and his administration’s blind eye to due process. 

Lexington resident Fred Langenegger held a sign that read, “due process for all immigrants,” which he said “about sums it up.”

“Immigrants are human beings like all the rest of us. They are just as valuable and deserve total respect,” he said. “I just want our government to follow and obey its laws. When our government doesn’t uphold its laws, it’s lost its way and that’s what our government has right now. It’s lost its way.”

The protesters were met with several honks in support and a few opposers while standing along a roundabout.

One man pulled over and said, “I didn’t see you guys doing this under Obama or Biden. What’s the difference?”

Another man driving a large box truck yelled, “deport them all” as he drove around the intersection. 

There are usually more drivers who express support of the group’s messages than hecklers, Lisa Berlind, a Concord resident who protested on Saturday, said. And the few negative voices don’t get under the protesters’ skin. Many of the activists have been protesting for most of their lives, in fact, and don’t have plans to slow down. 

Olcott, who’s a member of Indivisible, the left-wing activist group that pushes for progressive leadership in Washington, first started protesting during the Vietnam War. Likewise, Bader protested Vietnam in New York City with his high school friends because they didn’t want to get drafted, he told the Observer.

Like Olcott and Bader, many of the protestors at the rally on Saturday plan to continue standing up for what they believe in and encourage others to do the same.    

“We don’t have to just sit passively in fear on our couches. We can come together,” Langenegger proclaimed. “We can call on our government, and if enough of us get together, we can compel our government to actually do the right thing.”