NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

ON THE GROUND WITH A SCRAPPY NETWORK OF VOLUNTEERS PROTECTING THEIR COMMUNITY FROM ICE

- JULIA LURIE

Jonathan Paz, founder of the volunteer rapid response group Fuerza, at Waltham's Azteca Market in June

THE GROUP CHAT lit up Jonathan Paz’s phone: Another immigration raid was happening a few blocks away. Paz took off running.

He arrived minutes later on a quiet block of auto body warehouses in Waltham, Massachusetts, where suvs with tinted windows had surrounded a sedan and apprehended the driver, a man in his late 20s. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in a balaclava and tactical vest stood in the street, talking to a 13-year-old boy who had been in the car. As Paz approached, he realized the agent was going through the boy's phone and asking about his immigration status.

Paz, 32, is the founder of Fuerza, a volunteer group in Waltham that responds to ongoing ICE arrests. On that gray morning in May, he had been in the middle of a neighborhood patrol walk when he got the text messages. He did as he's trained dozens of volunteers to do: He pulled out his phone and started recording, staying a few feet from the officers, and addressed the boy. “I was telling him to relax. I was telling him to breathe,” Paz said. “I was telling him his rights—like, don’t say nothing. You're here. You're fine with us.”

A handful of other volunteers were already on the scene, including Colleen Bradley-MacArthur, a Waltham city councilor, who recorded a video as an agent veered his car toward where she stood on the sidewalk before telling her not to interfere.