feature

feature story (only one at a time)

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    In an Emergency, Break Glass

    ByToby Sackton

    Imagine this scenario after November 3rd. Democrats have exceeded expectations and seem to be on the verge of winning 52 seats in the Senate, after taking the house with a substantial majority. But it is November 5th, and Michigan’s county canvass has just begun, with El-Sayed ahead by only a few thousand ballots and a recount looming.

    Pennsylvania Democratic senator John Fetterman, known to be erratic, announces that he is switching parties and becoming a Republican as he will not be in the same party as El-Sayed. Then Mike Rogers, the losing Republican Candidate, calls on the Justice Department to seize ballots in Detroit, on the false grounds of massive dysfunction in the voting machine tabulation of paper ballots. With a preplanned strike that night, federal agents seize the sealed ballot containers held by the Detroit clerk for the canvass. When an injunction overturns their action on Nov. 6th, as many as 15,000 paper ballots appear to have gone missing, about 30% of the absentee ballots they took.

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    ICE Surges Deportations at Hanscom as More Demand Transparency

    ByToby Sackton

    The week of August 16th there were 3 ICE flights from Hanscom taking 73 Massachusetts residents away from their families to be scattered in prisons around the country. The next week there were 7 flights, taking 174 chained and shackled residents to unknown prisons. That is a 133% increase.

    We know about this because of a dedicated group of “birders” who, at risk of harassment, document each ICE flight and count the number of detainees. But at Boeing Field in Seattle, King County has installed a web cam to provide a public view of the ICE flights, and they publish the number of people from Seattle flown out on each flight.

    There is no excuse for Massport to oppose facilitating transparency around ICE flights. It is legal and in the purview of the airport operator. Although we cannot prevent these flights directly until we win political power in DC, we can document all ICE operations that take place on Massachuetts State property.

    Our demand for full transparency has united all of the groups working to oppose ICE deportations from Hanscom. The DE-ICE Hanscom coalition, of which Lexington Alarm is a founding member, has begun a postcard campaign to Massport and Gov. Healey.
    The Hanscom Field Advisory Commission sent a letter to Massport demanding transparency and that they consider a web cam.

  • The Terror of Being Transported from Burlington to Hanscom

    ByToby Sackton

    Three times a week, detainees from Massachusetts and other New England states are shackled, driven to Hanscom Field in Bedford, and loaded on prison transports to be flown to ICE’s Alexandria prison complex in Louisiana. Our observers document the flights and count the number of detainees, but we do not know their stories. Most detainees cannot speak freely and live in fear of retaliation by ICE. So it is rare to get a publicly documented story of what actually happens when people are taken from Burlington to Hanscom, forcibly removed from Massachusetts, away from their lawyers and families.

    This is the sworn testimony of Sonia..