Hundreds of residents and multiple community organizations addressed the Chelsea City Council during an extended public-speaking period about recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity that residents say has harmed families and eroded trust in institutions.

Speakers included people who said friends and family were detained or held at Burlington facilities, a survivor of an ICE arrest (Hilda Ramirez), teachers and union leaders who quantified student loss and described fear at schools, and health providers who cited missed appointments and broader public-health impacts. "We saw back in the spring a terrible incident with several children being detained by ICE after an incident at Chelsea High School," Catherine Anderson, president of the Chelsea Teachers Union, said. "Chelsea Public Schools has lost 300 students, which is a 5% drop in our student population." (Speaker-provided figure.)

Several speakers urged concrete municipal steps: prohibiting ICE from using municipal parking lots and school parking areas, clarifying that police should not cooperate with ICE during work hours, and preventing fingerprinting of minors as an automatic practice in Chelsea court or police processing. Juliana Morris, a primary care provider at MGH Chelsea Health Center, said fear of ICE has led patients to cancel appointments and described the broader health impacts of that avoidance.

Organizers from Luce Immigration Justice Network submitted a petition titled commonly referred to at the meeting as the "ICE out of Chelsea" petition. Councilor Jimenez Rivera moved to take the petition out of the printed order and refer it to the subcommittee on conference for further review with organizers, Chelsea police, the legal department, and council members. The council processed the referral without recorded objection and set the item for subcommittee work to examine which protections the city can legally and practically adopt.

Councilors debated scope and limits. Some members emphasized the city’s limited authority over federal immigration enforcement and urged working with the state and federal partners for remedies; others stressed local policy and enforcement choices that could be clarified or codified. Several councilors — and community members present — called for the city to study practices at court and police facilities and to consider ordinances that would restrict ICE activity on municipal property.

The council did not adopt an ordinance at the meeting; rather the body established a procedural path for further study and possible local policy recommendations through a subcommittee process.