Read the testimony of BWC Immigrant Justice Committee Co-Chair, Richard Colbath-Hess at the October 16th Massachusetts Port Authority Board Meeting below:

My name is Richard Colbath-Hess, co-chair of the Workers Circle Immigration Committee. The Boston Workers Circle — a 125-year-old Massachusetts Jewish organization — was founded by and for immigrants, to support one another and to build a just community.

Yet today, in our own Commonwealth, our institutions are complicit in injustice.

Hanscom Field has been used for ICE deportation flights — flights that, according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the ACLU, separate families, deny due process, and involve inhumane treatment of detainees.

Here in Massachusetts, people have been detained for exercising political speech and then shipped out of state. Others are held in crowded, unsanitary conditions, sleeping on concrete floors, denied medical care, and cut off from their lawyers and families.

One example is José Pineda, a 61-year-old man from East Boston with Temporary Protected Status. On his way to work, José was stopped by five ICE agents, arrested despite his legal status, and taken to the Burlington ICE office. He was held in a crowded room with 40–60 other men — one toilet, little food, and only a Mylar blanket to sleep on. He was denied contact with his lawyer, and his family had no idea where he was. He had, in effect, disappeared.

Two days later, José was released with no explanation. ICE confiscated the $600 in cash he had with him.

Imagine what this does to him… to his wife… to his 12-year-old son. And imagine what it does to us — to our sense of justice and to our Constitution.

Massport says it cannot stop these flights for legal reasons. But the flights from Hanscom are not simply logistical operations — they are the final step in a process of dehumanization. And anyone who participates in that process becomes complicit.

Law alone cannot settle questions of conscience. The Nuremberg Principles, established after World War II, remind us:

“No official can excuse participation in human rights violations by saying they were ‘just following orders’ — or ‘just doing their job.’”

Each of us must face our own moral responsibility.

Massport is more than a transportation agency — it represents the values of the Commonwealth. Even within legal constraints, it can act with transparency, question federal contracts, and ensure Massachusetts is not complicit in human rights abuses.

Nuremberg taught us that legality is not always morality. I urge Massport and our public officials to stand on the side of human dignity and take every possible step to end these flights.

We live in a time when institution after institution — Columbia, Harvard, CBS — caves to pressure and fear. Someone must stand up and say no.

History will ask: Did we act with courage and conscience — or did we look away? You cannot say you did not know.

Please — find a way to deny ICE access to Massport facilities.

Thank you.