BOSTON MAYOR WU & IMMIGRATION LAW

 

 This was published prior to BOSTON MAYOR WU's testimony before the MAGA GOP & 

explains the governing statutes:

Republicans ramp up attacks on Boston as Mayor Wu prepares to testify before Congress

In two days Boston Mayor Michelle Wu will go before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington to testify about immigration enforcement in the city. Ahead of the hearing, the committee released a video with footage of President Donald Trump, a copy of a burning U.S. Constitution and an assortment of bleak headlines.

“I cannot recall seeing a comparable video released before congressional testimony in the past,” GBH politics reporter Adam Reilly said. “... It almost has a pro-wrestling aesthetic to it.”

What about immigration enforcement specifically will lawmakers ask Wu about? Reilly said it’s possible that there will be questions about what Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said in an interview with WCVB last month.

“I would say it was actually pretty innocuous,” Reilly said. “He said the BPD is limited by state and local laws when it comes to cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and the city is. But that limit has its own limitations.”

A 2017 ruling from the highest court in Massachusetts bars local law enforcement — like the Boston Police Department — from working with federal authorities on cases where the only issue at hand is a person being undocumented. They can collaborate when there are threats to public safety, but are otherwise prohibited from getting involved in immigration raids. Boston has an ordinance called the Trust Act that lays out similar guidelines. Being in the U.S. without a proper immigration status is considered a civil violation, not a criminal one.

“So the only thing state and local law do not let Boston do is hold people in so-called civil immigration detainers which, again, are inquiries from the federal government which say that the feds might want to deport someone and they want them held because they may be here illegally,” Reilly said. “ The BPD doesn’t care when it comes to crime about your immigration status. If you are a victimizer, they want to track you down and apprehend you. If you are a victim, they want to protect you regardless of whether you’re undocumented or not.”

But that’s not the narrative that has spread, according to Reilly: “I saw a lot of headlines that just fundamentally misrepresented what he said. People tweeting, ‘Boston police commissioner says he won’t deport violent criminals from the city. Come and get him, Tom Homan.’ And that’s just a fundamental misrepresentation of what he actually said.”

GBH - IMMGRATION LAW