A Bangladeshi national convicted of sexually assaulting a minor was taken into federal custody on August 4 the moment he walked out of Connecticut prison, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Majabed Hussein Tarek, who is in the country without legal authorization, now faces immigration proceedings while held in ICE custody.
The ICE Boston Field Office announced Tarek's arrest, saying his criminal record includes convictions for lewd or lascivious acts with a minor, exploitation of a minor, and felony sexual assault, as reported by New Bedford Guide. Tarek had been in the custody of the Connecticut Department of Correction before his release directly into ICE's hands. A Department of Homeland Security press release tied the underlying sex-offense convictions to Burlington, Massachusetts, though ICE has not released additional details about the date or location of those convictions, Tarek's immigration history, or whether a final order of removal has been issued against him.
Neither Connecticut nor Massachusetts officials were immediately available for comment on the transfer from state custody to federal agents, per the same account. In Tarek's case, the transfer occurred as state custody ended.
Why ICE Waits at the Prison Door
The timing of Tarek's arrest is not incidental. Under Connecticut's TRUST Act, state and local law enforcement and correction officials are generally restricted from honoring civil ICE detainers without a judicial warrant, but the law includes exceptions allowing compliance for certain serious convictions and specified offenses, including some sexual-assault and child-exploitation crimes, according to CT Mirror. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against Connecticut in April 2026 challenging that sanctuary policy.
Massachusetts operates under a similar constraint. The state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Lunn v. Commonwealth that court officers and law enforcement personnel lack statutory authority under state law to hold someone solely on the basis of a federal civil immigration detainer once state custody ends, per Justia Law. In Tarek's case, ICE agents made an arrest when state custody ended rather than requesting an extended local hold — a pattern that played out during the August 2025 arrest of Sanjay Sivan Walsh, a Jamaican national convicted of two counts of second-degree sexual assault, after Connecticut custody, according to CT Mirror.
Part of a Larger Federal Push
Federal immigration authorities have carried out regional enforcement operations involving criminal noncitizens.
The ICE ERO Boston Field Office, headquartered at 1000 District Avenue in Burlington, oversees immigration enforcement and processing across six New England states — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, according to ICE. An ICE enforcement operation in Massachusetts resulted in more than 1,400 arrests during a months-long operation. More than 600 people arrested had significant convictions or pending criminal charges.
That scale of enforcement has drawn sustained scrutiny. U.S. Sen. Ed Markey made an oversight inquiry in 2025 about the Burlington processing facility, according to CT Insider. Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux separately accused ICE Boston of using social media tactics to shame local departments into violating Massachusetts detainer limits, a dispute Hoodline covered in its report on the sheriff's clash with ICE.
Tip Line and Ongoing Questions
ICE said members of the public can report suspected immigration violations to its tip line at 866-347-2423. Tarek's case is one of several recent ICE Boston arrests involving sex offenses against minors that Hoodline has covered in past weeks, including a case involving a Cameroonian man convicted of rape and solicitation; the underlying case involved an adult woman he was dating, according to a Cameroonian man with 12 arraignments.
Key details remain unresolved. Neither the exact court records nor sentencing dates tied to Tarek's underlying convictions have been made public, and it is not known whether he has a final administrative order of removal or what his prior immigration history entails. Those questions are likely to surface as his immigration proceedings continue.
