President-elect Donald Trump wants to make life in Boston better. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu wants to make it worse.
That’s the takeaway from her comments during the past week about the expected immigration policies of the incoming second Trump administration.
Wu has been attempting to defend the city of Boston’s insane “Trust Act,” which prevents Boston police from honoring requests for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain illegal immigrants who have been arrested by city police on charges they committed a crime.
Put another way: The Boston Trust Act ordinance protects criminals who are already in this country illegally from being sent back to the country they come from.
Here’s how Wu described it during an appearance on WGBH’s show Boston Public Radio on Tuesday, November 12:
The Boston Trust Act puts strict prohibitions on local law enforcement from being pulled into becoming the enforcement arm for the whims of whatever the sort of approach of federal immigration law might be. There are certain exceptions when there’s a — for example — a particular type of warrant around particular types of criminal activity where — and coordination allowed — around human trafficking and drug trafficking and cyber crimes and some specific instances. But the idea that certain local law enforcement agencies will be required or will be expected to participate in mass deportations of residents who have not been part of serious criminal activity just to fulfill this campaign promise. This is not something that is possible under the laws in Boston.
Let’s pick this statement apart.
First, “whim” means a sudden change of mind for unexplained or possibly nonexistent reasons. The “whims” of federal immigration authorities are to arrest noncitizens who don’t have a right to be in the country after they are arrested for or convicted of committing a crime in this country. Oddly enough, they expect local police to cooperate with them in this noble endeavor.
Second, no one is asking local police in Boston to “participate in mass deportations.” Federal immigration authorities handle deportations – usually after an immigration judge has examined the case and decided that under federal law the noncitizen should go.
The idea that the feds want local police to enforce federal immigration laws is absurd. All they want is minimal cooperation when local police have an illegal immigrant in custody for a crime the illegal immigrant committed here.
Here’s how Tom Homan, President-elect Trump’s incoming border czar, puts it on page 191 of his 2020 book Defend the Border and Save Lives:
“We’re not asking local law enforcement to be immigration cops. We’re not asking them to pull cars over and ask people about their immigration status, and we never have. All we’re asking them to do is share information on arrested criminals. ICE agents don’t want to be cops; we just want access to the jails where those criminals are already locked up. It’s that simple.”
Third, crime matters, no matter what kind of crime it is. If a crime isn’t significant, then local police shouldn’t arrest people for it or press charges. If it is, then we should all take it seriously.
And why would we want people who commit crimes after already being here illegally to continue to live here?
Yesterday, federal immigration officers from the Boston field office of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arrested a 21-year-old Guatemalan man in Great Barrington, a town in western Massachusetts.
Local police arrested the man February 29, 2024, on a charge of rape of a child by force. The Berkshire Eaglereports that police say the man forced a 14-year-old girl to have oral sex while parked in his car at a remote sports field.
Federal immigration authorities sent Great Barrington police an immigration detainer request. Great Barington police ignored it. Why?
“Great Barrington is a sanctuary town, so local police are not allowed to help ICE with their immigration detainer requests,” The Berkshire Eaglesays.
A judge let him out pending trial. The feds picked him up Wednesday, November 20 – 265 days after he was initially arrested.
This scenario of non-cooperation with federal authorities is not a mistake. This is how sanctuary-city politicians like Michelle Wu want things to go.
As New Boston Post reported earlier today, Boston police ignored 33 detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Enforcement between 2021 and 2023.
The publicly available records don’t say what the crimes were.
We can only hope that none of them is child rape.
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Boston City Hall 
