GREAT BARRINGTON — Attarilm Mcclennon woke up on Tuesday morning to see a man standing on the fire escape and talking on the phone outside his apartment building in Barrington House.
When Mcclennon stepped out into the hallway that connects Main Street with the Triplex parking lot, he saw another man lingering there.
Mcclennon, who works at his family’s Momma Lo’s Southern Style BBQ downstairs, said he stepped outside to the unfolding commotion in the parking lot as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested two immigrants who live and work in the building.
But soon Mcclennon realized something — the man on the fire escape and the other one in the building looked a little familiar.
“I realized those two dudes have been walking through this hallway all week,” he said, adding that it was during the daytime.
Mcclennon’s brother, Ahmed Mcclennon, said that he also noticed a similar type of surveillance of the building last summer that he believes may have been ICE or other law enforcement.
Attarilm Mcclennon right, saw the arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday morning unfold at the Barrington House apartments where he lives and works.HEATHER BELLOW — THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
The May 6 arrests are the latest to rattle the Berkshires as federal authorities pursue President Trump’s aggressive mission to deport or otherwise remove undocumented immigrants. A March crackdown resulted in the capture of at least 10 people in the Berkshires — and 370 statewide.
While the administration has said it would target undocumented people with criminal records, there have been numerous examples of agents detaining people who have never been charged with a crime.
It is unclear why ICE targeted these men. An ICE spokesperson did not respond to requests for information.
Tuesday’s raid took place on a busy morning in the heart of downtown. It shook bystanders and drew people out from Rubi’s Cafe and The Triplex Cinema.
Videos shared with The Eagle show people videotaping the arrests and asking ICE officers questions about warrants and due process. Others taunted the officers, most of whom were masked and heavily armed. Avery Ripley, who works at Rubi’s captured video, including that of a drone overhead.
As officers walked one of the men they arrested down the fire escape from his apartment, one person was heard saying they “love America,” and thanked the officers for “doing their jobs.”
Mcclennon said that one of the men arrested works at Fiesta Bar and Grill, which is across the hall from Momma Lo’s, and asked the Mcclennons to call his boss.
Great Barrington Police Chief Paul Storti said the department received a phone call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security around 5:30 a.m. to let them know that they were in the area.
Barrington House owner Richard Stanley said he did not know the tenant personally, and expressed dismay at what he called “gestapo” tactics he says are meant to “intimidate.”
Ben Elliott, a Select Board member who works at The Triplex Cinema, was arriving at work when he saw the commotion. He also videotaped one of the arrests.
Elliott said he had heard that ICE also may have also arrested someone off Bridge Street near Quick Print and the Berkshire Food Co-op around 7:30 a.m.
The ICE arrests involved multiple unmarked vehicles, some heavily armed law enforcement officials and a drone.
Seeing that one of the officers had a battering ram to break the apartment door down, the building’s maintenance director Sean O’Brien got his keys ready. But that turned out not to be necessary, he said.
“None of that came to pass,” O’Brien said. “They knocked on the door and he opened the door and surrendered himself.”
Some bystanders confronted O’Brien, thinking he was helping ICE — which he and witnesses and Barrington House tenants said that was far from the truth.
“They turned on me,” O’Brien said. “It just ruffled my feathers up a little bit because they had the completely wrong idea of what happened."
“A woman was screaming into the window, ‘You called them, you called them,’” O’Brien said of the accusation that he had called ICE.
O’Brien did call local police to keep the peace and stop the trespassing.
Hearing this, Mcclennon’s brother Ahmed Mcclennon, said of O’Brien, “He’s the coolest man in the world. He would be the last person to do that.”
And O’Brien said that ICE officers were “very polite and professional to [the tenant],” and “were not abusive or anything like that.”
He also said that one of the men arrested is, “to the best of my knowledge, a very, very nice guy and a hard worker.”
“I would be very surprised,” O’Brien said, “if he were guilty of some extra crime that brought their attention to him.”
Heather Bellow is a reporter for The Berkshire Eagle.
Marina Kotchoubey at the Ian Ingersoll Cabinetmakers showroom in West Cornwall.
Sometime in the mid-2010s, with grandkids accumulating, he started to picture a future away from the shop. It was getting time to step away and enjoy what he insists is one of the most beautiful parts of the world: the Northwest Corner of Connecticut. But just because he was aging out of the job didn’t mean his employees needed to as well.
Ingersoll recognized the home he’d built for these creative experts — a place where they, too, could make their livings building masterworks of fine furniture. So, for his next big challenge, he began the search for someone he could trust to take what he’d made and build it even better. After searching for quite some time, he decided to look next door.
Technically, Marina Kotchoubey grew up in Manhattan but she spent weekends and summers in Cornwall, Connecticut, feeling more at home amongst the woods and rivers of Litchfield County than in the subways of the city. But business opportunities kept her away from making her permanent home in the region.
After college, Kotchoubey moved to Paris to run the U.S. branch of children’s fashion brand Petit Bateau. At the young age of 23, it was a job she wasn’t ready for. But that’s where Kotchoubey finds her creative challenges.
By pairing the experience of her peers and coworkers with her razor-sharp intuition, Kotchoubey ran the brand with seamless expertise despite her lack of experience. She jumped into the deep end of the pool and challenged herself to swim. For seven years, she swam like an Olympian.
After her time in France, she felt ready to finally make a home in Cornwall. With no career or even job lined up, she approached several local businesses around the Northwest Corner and offered to help out in a consulting capacity. After years of challenging conditions in the deep end, this seemed like calm, shallow waters. And that’s when her neighbor, Ian Ingersoll, approached her.
At first, he was looking for a little help with business issues. Ian Ingersoll Cabinetmakers was doing well, but a younger customer base of homeowners and interior designers weren’t as keen on classic Shaker furniture. Though the studio had already started to diversify their offerings, Kotchoubey was instrumental in implementing a smooth transition to other styles of furniture. Ingersoll saw that, thanks to her breadth of experience and enterprising vision, she could take the baton and run with it.
In 2025, he handed her the keys.
When she took the reins, Kotchoubey saw two new ways forward. She could shake things up and pivot the shop toward installations and on-site custom builds. This would require new equipment, new clients and possibly new craftsmen. The other path leaned into what she had already helped the company do: expand its offerings and cater to a new, less traditionally minded clientele.
With confidence in her craftsmen and the reputation their work has garnered, she resisted the urge to pivot and instead relied on what makes Ian Ingersoll Cabinetmakers great — high-quality furniture made by expert craftsmen.
The journey isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. There are great challenges that come with being a young woman in an older man’s world. Firstly, she had to win the respect of her employees, despite not sharing in their skills and know-how. She accomplished that, once again, by listening to the experts and not forcing her vision on a remarkably capable group. The woodworking side of things might be new, but her ability to swim in unknown waters has proven unflappable throughout her career.
Now in its sixth decade of operations, Ian Ingersoll Cabinetmakers shows no sign of slowing down. Kotchoubey’s leadership is finding new customers by expanding on the reputation of the work. With increasing demand and a steadfast commitment to slow, quality jobs, don’t expect to pop into their West Cornwall showroom and leave with a piece anytime soon. Lead times on custom creations range from 12 to 16 weeks, but if things keep going the way they are, that wait could get even longer.
To see some of the company’s offerings, visit ianingersoll.com.
Marina Kotchoubey at the Ian Ingersoll Cabinetmakers.Photo by D.H. Callahan
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