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.
Proffitt and her husband and business partner, Robert Bristow, are well-known leaders in the art and architecture communities, and their home, studio and workshop in Lakeville; store and office at 16 Main St. in Salisbury; and gallery space in Norfolk are vibrant hubs for arts and design in the region.
Proffitt has been coming to the area since she was a teenager. Originally from Puerto Rico, her family moved to the New York City area in the 1970’s. Her artist and architect father encouraged her interests in art and design and her deep desire to create. At school, she excelled in math and art and soon realized that this was all she wanted to do. “Think logically and then break the mold with creativity,” she said.
Armed with a degree in visual art from Trinity College, she pursued advanced studies at Berkeley and Pratt before receiving a master’s degree in architecture from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she met Bristow. Both landed apprenticeships in Boston and were drawn to the arts community in Norfolk centered around the Yale Summer Arts Program. The area quickly became their personal and family anchor.
They started Poesis, a furniture design and manufacturing studio, with a small loan from her mother. They landed a major house project and soon met a hotelier at a party who hired them on the spot to design a hotel in Washington, D.C.
Proffitt said, “I was hooked because it combined everything I wanted to do creatively: design experiences in the broadest sense with all the supporting pieces of the puzzle — furniture, objects, art. My father felt that architecture was the Renaissance profession: It holds the seeds of art, design, engineering and all the other ingredients. For me, it all starts with art.”
A rendering of King Winery, one of Pilar Proffitt’s current interior design projects.Provided
Proffitt is devoted to the area. She and Bristow raised their family in Lakeville. Their daughter Grace, a sculptor, attended Hotchkiss and is pursuing her MFA at University of Pennsylvania. Their daughter Ellis, also a graduate of Hotchkiss and Trinity, is a mathematician and aspiring actress in Los Angeles; and their son Sam attended Salisbury School and is a junior at Trinity, majoring in art history with a minor in architecture. They all are carrying forward the family’s passion for arts, architecture and design.
Proffitt’s interior design work and unique furniture pieces welcome visitors at Hotchkiss’ Art Center, the Scoville Memorial Library, her own wHole hOuse shop in Salisbury and, soon, across the street in the new Jam Food Shop, which is expected to open this fall.
The region’s many museums and galleries include some of Proffitt’s favorites, from Mass MoCA and the Clark to Salisbury’s Geary, Mad Rose in Millerton, Jack Shainman in Kinderhook and Art Omi in Ghent. Proffitt loves the connections and new opportunities brought to the community by the increase in full-time residents, as well as impromptu get-togethers with friends — recently watching a Knicks playoff game at the tavern bar at the White Hart. Moments like that keep her grounded here.
In addition to the White Hart, Proffitt is a fan of area restaurants, including Fern for a quick pasta at the bar; Isabela in Amenia, where Michelin-starred chef Jose Ramirez Ruiz is from Puerto Rico; and Clare de Boer’s Stissing House in Pine Plains.
A perfect day for Proffitt is spent working in her studio overlooking Lake Wononscopomuc, without distractions, rain or shine. It is a quiet and peaceful place that supports her many architecture and design projects. When asked what she would say to a younger version of herself just starting a career, she responded, “Don’t be so shy. As one of my professors told me, ‘Sometimes you just have to crash the party.’ Draw, write, run, play tennis. And travel!”
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