Ella Tabasky is an organizer with No ICE for ME, a collective of community members, faith leaders, educators and other advocates who have been working to end Cumberland County’s collaboration with ICE. She lives in Brunswick.

Growing up on the North Shore of Massachusetts, I spent enough time at the Burlington Mall that it still feels familiar, nostalgic even to visit. It’s a stretch of suburbia I’ve returned to over the years without much thought.

Today just beyond the mall’s shadow sits a nondescript office building where Mainers are being held in conditions that demand our attention.

The DHS ICE Boston Field Office in Burlington has come under scrutiny in recent months, not just from advocates but also from immigration rights attorneys, including those at Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, and from elected officials across Maine and Massachusetts. Their inquiries point to serious concerns: overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and detainees being held far longer than the facility was ever intended to allow.

This building is not zoned or designed for detention. And it is against ICE’s own policy to hold people for more than 12 hours in a building of this kind. And yet, according to ongoing investigations, individuals, including many from Maine, have been kept there for days.

I recently traveled from Maine with dozens of others, carrying care packages of food, hygiene items and letters of support for the people being held inside. Alongside eight other Mainers and three Massachusetts residents, including my sister, we attempted to deliver those supplies.

We were arrested.

Authorities claim we were blocking the entrance, disrupting operations and preventing people from attending their scheduled appointments. Yet deliveries from UPS, FedEx and DoorDash continued without issue. People arriving for appointments spoke with us, some expressing relief that others were paying attention to what was happening inside.

Burlington police later said our presence diverted critical law enforcement resources from other pressing needs. That claim misses the larger point. The real strain on public systems is not a small group of peaceful people standing outside a building with care packages. It is the continued use of an ill-suited facility to detain human beings in conditions that raise serious legal and moral concerns. Directing their attention toward those sounding the alarm obscures the far more urgent issue of what is happening inside those walls and why.

Many of the people taken during the enforcement action known as “Operation Catch of the Day” were transported out of state, including to Burlington. And while immigration enforcement activity no longer dominates Maine news, these inhumane practices continue. 

People are still being ripped from their families, transported out of state and detained in conditions that deny them basic dignity and due process, tearing apart lives and communities in the process. 

There was something powerful about Mainers crossing state lines to stand up for other Mainers who had been taken from their communities and placed behind closed doors in abhorrent conditions.

For me, it was also personal. I returned to my home state not for comfort or nostalgia, but to confront what is happening there and to stand alongside my sister, who still lives there, in calling it out.

We are the daughters of a Holocaust educator. We were raised to understand that “Never again” is not just about remembering history. It is about recognizing when something is wrong in the present and refusing to stay silent.

What is happening in Burlington may be out of sight for most people. But it should not be out of mind.