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.
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Izzy Fitch at Battle Hill Forge in Wassaic.
The giant metal mantis, built by artist Jim Hackett, is now part of a summer contest Fitch devised. He’ll strap it to the roof rack of his car and drive it around. When people spot it, they can take a photo, post it on social media and tag @battlehillforge, @lakevillejournal and @themillertonnews. At the end of the contest, names will be drawn at random and gift certificates to Battle Hill Forge will be awarded.
“It’s just for fun,” said Fitch, whose work often blurs the boundaries between art, utility and play. “Who couldn’t use more fun these days?”
Fitch moves through his sprawling workshop spaces like an enthusiastic museum guide leading visitors through a collection he forgot he owned. Every few steps, something catches his attention. A hand-forged daffodil. A dragonfly. A prototype trellis. A powder horn his great-grandfather taught him to make. A concrete toad inherited from his grandmother.
“Oh, this is cool,” he says, veering off course.
A few minutes later:
“Oh, I forgot to show you this.”
Then:
“You want to see something really cool?”
The tour never quite follows a straight line.
Neither does Fitch.
Long before Battle Hill Forge became known for custom gates, garden structures and sculpture found everywhere from private estates to major cultural institutions, Fitch was a child building armor for toy animals.
“I had a Black Panther that was this big and I armored it,” he says, holding his hands a few inches apart. “I made all my little people and creatures, and I armored them all up and I made all the weapons for them.”
Fitch’s father was a logger. Tools were plentiful. Toys were not.
“He wouldn’t buy us toys really, so we would have to make our own.”
The family business, if there was one, was making things.
Izzy FitchNatalia Zukerman
His great-grandfather was a master craftsman who made Windsor chairs in collaboration with his uncle, Bert Fitch. His father supplied the raw materials, Bert made the chairs, his great-grandfather carved the spindles. His relatives were renowned woodworkers. People would travel from far and wide to have his great grandfather make handles for them.
“I really learned a lot from spending time with my grandparents and my great-uncles,” he says.
Today, that inheritance is visible everywhere inside the forge.
Giant steel pumpkins wait beside elegant peony supports. Honeycomb sculptures support an endearing bee also made by Hackett. Giant orbs loom playfully. Metal mushrooms, used in classes Fitch teaches to children, line the windowsills.
Many are prototypes Some are commissions. Some exist simply because Fitch thought they might be fun to make.
“I just think of something cool,” he says. And then he makes it.
“Most of the metalworkers that I work with don’t want to talk to people,” he says. “They’re like, ‘Just tell us what you want. Give me the plans and I’ll make it.’”
Fitch is different. Part craftsman and part translator, he enjoys helping clients discover what they want before it exists.
Unless, of course, he’s distracted by a frog story.
The previous Battle Hill Forge location, in Millerton, included a small pond where Fitch often ate lunch.
“There was a dead mouse out there one time,” he recalls. “This frog was so clever. He would sit near the dead mouse and when flies came down, he would get a fly.”
He watched the frog for an entire lunch break.
The story arrived somewhere between explanations of Japanese patinas and custom railings.
It also explains a lot.Fitch notices everything: plants, insects, old tools, odd solutions, clever engineering tricks. His work is filled with observations gathered from gardens, forests, old European designs and conversations with other makers.
A peony support isn’t just a peony support. It’s an opportunity to improve something. A trellis isn’t just a trellis. Maybe it can come apart for shipping. Maybe it can help a plant grow differently. Maybe it can do something no one has considered before.
“I’m not really inventing anything new,” he says. “I just tweak it a little bit.”
After its beginning in Falls Village, moving to Millerton and eventually settling in Wassaic, Battle Hill Forge has become one of the region’s success stories. The shop is booked months in advance. Projects range from garden ornaments to monumental railings weighing hundreds of pounds. Designers seek him out. Gardeners collect his work.
Yet Fitch remains most animated when discussing collaboration.
The intern helping in the shop first met him as a student in one of his metalworking classes. Local glass artists add to his sculptures. Garden designers have helped refine his plant supports. For Burning Man this summer, he’s joining a team of fellow artists to build an installation featuring an oculus and a pair of metal sphinxes.
“We’ll have a little party,” he says.
The phrase could describe half the projects in the shop, especially the praying mantis. Technically, that sculpture belongs to Hackett.
“He makes all this cool stuff,” Fitch says. “I sell them for him because he’s one of those artists who doesn’t want to deal with the public.”
Fitch laughs.
“Which is totally smart.”
Outside, a dog wanders through the yard. A timber framer works next door. Metal rusts into beautiful shades of brown. New ideas wait in various stages of completion and there’s just a little magic around every corner.
To contact Battle Hill Forge, visit battlehillforge.com.
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