Federal spending data shows Mass. companies that work with ICE
SPRINGFIELD — Tactical vehicles, law enforcement badges, a 24/7 transcription and language interpretation service — these are some of the goods and services Massachusetts companies have provided to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
About a dozen companies across the Bay State, stretching from Pittsfield to Plymouth, work with ICE in some capacity, federal records show.
A list of companies working with ICE from around the country, drawn from federal spending data, was recently compiled on a map as part of a website called boycottcitizens.org , which accuses Citizens Bank of funding a pair of private prisons. The people who operate the domain, which was first registered at the end of May, did not return a request for comment Tuesday.
A note on the map says the compilation is not intended to create a boycott list, but rather serve as a springboard for further research into local companies that are doing business with the federal agency. The list, it says , focuses on contractors providing surveillance, transportation and detention services.
A Lenco BearCat outside the Bethlehem (Pa.) Police Department. (Chris Post / lehighvalleylive.com, File)Chris Post file photo | lehighvalleylive.com contributor
The Massachusetts companies include Lenco Industries, the Pittsfield-based vehicle manufacturer, which had a $5.5 million contract with ICE that ran from 2018 to 2022 to provide the agency with tactical armored vehicles. Lenco did not return a request for comment, but federal spending data shows over the years it has contracted with a slew of federal agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Special Operations Command.
In the Boston area, there's a contract in which ICE paid for parking, and it also has lodged people it detained at Plymouth County Correctional Facility.
ICE paid an indoor gun range in Dracut, On Target Firearms Indoor Range, to rent its firing range, starting back in 2023. A phone message left with the facility went unreturned. Data shows the Department of Veterans Affairs also paid to access the firing range.
Meanwhile, Attleborough Falls-based V.H. Blackinton and Co. partners with a slew of federal agencies, including the Secret Service. The company, started in 1852, bills itself as the country's largest manufacturer of law enforcement badges, crafting them for sheriff's departments, firefighters and security guards. It declined to comment. Data shows it started a $164,630 contract with ICE in March for badges and insignia.
Lionbridge Global Solutions, in Waltham, has provided translation and interpretation services to ICE. For instance, ICE is set to pay Lionbridge about $3.6 million for "translation, transcription, and interpretation services, through a language line that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year."
John Paradis, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who is a leader in the Indivisible Northampton/Swing Left Western Mass coalition, said the list of ICE contracts is a matter of transparency.
Recent news stories of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement action in Los Angeles showed armored vehicles , similar to what a SWAT team might use, deployed on that city's streets, Paradis said. He added that it was unclear, though, whether those vehicles were made in Western Massachusetts.
"The public, taxpayers deserve to know what is happening in their own region in supporting this system, which is repugnant, and is cruel and inhumane," Paradis said.
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