The Numbers Nobody Will Break Down

Three things this page verified this week have the same shape.

A campaign in Springfield, Ohio says it spoke with more than a hundred people wearing ICE ankle monitors — because nobody official publishes how many there are. ICE says it arrested 82 people on the Massachusetts coast in September, and named seven of them. And one city beside that operation has decided to stop paying for the cameras that read its licence plates, while every other camera around it goes on reading.

None of that is a rule change. No case moved. What the three have in common is this: the number that would tell a family where it stands is either being kept by the people being counted, or being held back by the agency doing the counting.

This is not a prediction about you. It is an argument for one habit, and the end of this article says exactly what that habit is.

Over a hundred people, and no official number

On Wednesday, Oct. 21, church leaders and supporters gathered at Champion City Church in Springfield on the opening night of the four-day, 40-mile walk to Columbus. This page carried the walk when it set off on Oct. 20 and again when it arrived on Oct. 24. The Springfield News-Sun published its account of that first evening on Tuesday, Oct. 27, and the account contains something the earlier coverage did not.

Michaelle Louis of Champion City Church — an organizer this page has quoted since Sept. 17 — told the room: “As we built this campaign, we spoke with over 100 people who had the ankle monitors on their legs. The majority of them, their mental health has been negatively affected.”

Be clear about what kind of number that is. It is the campaign’s own count, from its own outreach, not an agency count. It is the figure a group of volunteers arrived at by talking to people, one at a time, over weeks.

It is also the only number there is. No United States agency publishes how many people in Springfield wear a monitor, and this page has never seen such a figure. A count built by volunteers exists because the count that should exist does not.

The man who showed the room his ankle

Gocelyn Fleuridor has lived in Springfield for four years. Three months ago he was fitted with a monitor. He spoke that night through Minister Archange Antoine, who translated.

“It’s so uncomfortable for me,” he said. “Where can I go? If I want to go somewhere I have to get permission.”

He said the device hurt his leg. Showing it to the crowd, he said he had been given no clear answer about whether anything less painful was available. “This is why I’m taking the risk to show you and tell you, so that you will understand,” he said.

That last sentence is worth sitting with, because it describes the whole problem. The information about what these devices are doing to people is held by the people wearing them, and it only becomes public when one of them decides to stand up in a room and take a risk.

What to do if yours hurts — and what that is worth

Here is the instruction, and then the honest limit on it.

Ask for a change in writing at your next check-in. Keep your own dated copy of what you asked and when. Ask a doctor to write down what the device is doing to your leg. Give those copies to a lawyer, and not only to the officer.

Now the limit. On Sept. 7 this page carried a community advocate’s account of his own client — a woman in her 60s whose doctor’s report recommended the device be removed. The advocate said the paperwork was handed in at ICE’s Blue Ash office and the monitor was not taken off. ICE did not answer that account in the story, and this page did not confirm it independently.

So the paper may not get the device off your leg. It is still the record a lawyer builds a case from later, and the only one that exists if you do not make it. Make it anyway.

And whatever the device is doing to you, do not try to remove it yourself, and keep going to every appointment.

If the part of this that is hardest is not your leg, 988 answers 24 hours a day. Call rather than text if you need another language, and say the language when they pick up.

Eighty-two, forty, thirty-four, seven

In September, ICE ran a three-day operation through New Bedford, Dartmouth and Fall River, Massachusetts. This page reported it on Sept. 22, Sept. 24 and Sept. 25. At the time the agency told WBUR it does not comment on ongoing or future operations, and the figure this page could publish was 34 — the arrests families had reported to advocates by that Thursday afternoon.

The agency has since given its own number: 82. The New Bedford Light reports that ICE identified only seven of those detained, all of whom it said had criminal charges. Governor Maura Healey said about 40 people were detained. The Light’s own review of state and federal court records found that only four of 23 men it could identify had criminal charges on their records in Massachusetts.

Four counters, four numbers, four different moments. They are not a dispute and they are not to be added, and none of them is a roster. What matters is the gap: ICE did not say how many of the 82 had convictions, how many had only pending charges, and how many had no criminal record at all. Seven names is the published part. The other 75 people are the silence.

This page named one person in that operation. On Sept. 22 it carried advocates’ identification of Kenchino Pierre of New Bedford, for whom the paper found no criminal case in Massachusetts records.

If someone you know was taken in a window like that one, the instruction is the same as it has been since August. Look them up yourself, today and again tomorrow. Write down the facility, the date and the time every single time you check. A blank result is a fact about the agency’s records, not about the person. Make sure a lawyer has the A-number now rather than after a transfer.

One city stops paying for its cameras

On Friday, Oct. 23, the New Bedford police department confirmed it had told Flock Safety on Oct. 8 that it would not renew the city’s contract for automated licence-plate readers, which expires Nov. 12. The city had already suspended the cameras in August, after investigators found two officers had used the system to track romantic partners; the Oct. 23 entry on the feed carries that account in full.

Read what that does not do before you read what it does. It is one city’s contract. It does not stop another police department, a state agency or a private network from reading a plate, and nothing in the reporting says what happens to the data already collected. The ordinance the city council is weighing is modelled on one Woonsocket, Rhode Island passed on Oct. 19 that bars sharing reader data for civil immigration enforcement — that is Woonsocket’s text, not New Bedford’s, and New Bedford has not passed it. The Oct. 23 entry on the feed sets this beside what this page has already carried about camera networks in Springfield and about a plate read in Austin.

There is one dated thing to do with it. The New Bedford Light says it is holding a public discussion, “Flock: Public Safety vs. Privacy,” at Keith Middle School on Wednesday, Oct. 28, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Those details are the paper’s own; check with the organizer before you travel.

The record you can keep yourself

Every story above comes down to the same five habits, and none of them needs anyone’s permission.

Write down what happens to you, the day it happens — the date, the time, the exact place, and the name or badge number of whoever was there. Keep your own dated copy of every paper you are handed and every paper you hand over, and give copies to a lawyer, not only to an officer. Ask in writing, not in conversation. Check the detainee locator for anyone missing, and log every check, including the ones that come back blank. And put your family plan on paper before you need it — who collects the children, who holds the documents, which lawyer gets the call — at tools and documents.

That is not optimism. It is the only part of the record you control.

What has not changed

TPS for Haiti and Syria is terminated, effective July 27, 2026, and those work permits expired the same day.

Losing TPS is still not a judge ordering you personally to leave, and most people who lost it do not have such an order. If a judge has already ordered your removal, that order did not go away — see a lawyer this week, not next month.

Nobody has to leave. If you are weighing going back anyway, talk to a lawyer first, because leaving can affect whether you are able to return. Nobody may charge you a fee to put your name on a list, a petition or a programme that would restore your status. There is nothing of that kind to apply for today.

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