Fresh off the mayor’s defense of the city’s sanctuary policies and public safety record before a Congressional oversight committee, the Boston City Council held a community-based hearing where advocates pushed for expansion of the Trust Act.
But there were few fireworks at Monday’s committee hearing. In their place, some confusion expressed by several councilors who expected to be having a conversation with representatives from the Wu administration and Boston Police Department about the effectiveness of the Trust Act.
Those groups weren’t invited though, as the committee chair wanted to hear from community groups instead.
The 2014 local law bars city police and other departments from cooperating with federal authorities on civil immigration detainers, and was reaffirmed by the City Council, by way of a unanimous vote, last December.
“It would inform residents to know exactly what each person or each department does or each agency will do, as it relates to the Trust Act or sanctuary city, because I don’t have a clear understanding of the Trust Act,” Councilor Ed Flynn said.
“I don’t have a clear understanding of sanctuary city, what it does do, what it doesn’t do, what impact it has, how it impacts residents, how it impacts undocumented residents,” Flynn added. “As part of those questions, I do think we have to have a conversation, as difficult as it may be, with the Boston Police, with the state police, and with federal officials.”
Flynn had sponsored an order for the day’s hearing that pertained to discrepancies in civil immigration detainer requests that were reported as being ignored last year by the Boston Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
While BPD Commissioner Michael Cox said his department refused to act on all 15 civil detainer requests it received last year, an ICE spokesperson told the Herald in January that Boston Police ignored 198 detainer requests from the feds that involved “egregious crime.”
A BPD spokesperson attributed the discrepancy, in part, to ICE faxing requests to district stations, rather than emailing them to a central department address.
Flynn’s hearing had called for testimony from Boston Police Department representatives, and after asking if BPD was invited to testify, was told by the day’s Public Safety and Criminal Justice committee chair Henry Santana that it was not.
“Our goal was to hear from community, and to hear from people on the ground,” Santana said. “They did not receive an official invitation.”
Santana said that decision was made in collaboration with Councilor Julia Mejia, the lead sponsor on the hearing’s other docket, which was aimed at auditing the “implementation and effectiveness” of the Trust Act.
Mejia said the day’s session was the first in a series of hearings she planned to hold on her Trust Act docket, and that future hearings would involve testimony from the Boston Police Department, Boston Public Schools, and Boston Public Health Commission.
“I wanted to switch things up and lead with community so that we can understand what the policy-making process needs to look like,” Mejia said. “When we’re looking to evaluate, we really believe that centering people who are living the realities and are doing the work are frontline folks who can help ground us in what that work needs to look like.”
Flynn wasn’t the only councilor anticipating a public-safety focused hearing on the heels of Mayor Michelle Wu’s defense of the city’s public safety record amid a Congressional grilling — and threats from House Republicans that Wu and three other mayors could face criminal prosecution and cuts to federal funding for their cities’ sanctuary policies — last week in Washington, D.C.
“When I was putting most of my questions together for today’s hearing, it was around the collaboration with public safety, as we thought that was the real crux of where some of the … friction is,” Councilor John FitzGerald said.
Instead, the day’s hearing mainly centered around remarks from councilors and testimony from community advocates who favor an expansion of the Trust Act, to make immigrants feel safer in the city.
“I think we all know that the attacks on the Boston Trust Act are not about public safety,” Councilor Benjamin Weber said. “I don’t think any of the people in Washington, D.C. talking about our Trust Act care about the public safety of people in Boston.
“But more importantly, there is not the public safety impact they’re talking about. Instead, these attacks are meant to spread fear,” Weber added. “I’m glad we’re having the conversation today so we can see what we can do to strengthen the Boston Trust Act.”
Lou Murray, co-founder of Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities, was one of the few people to testify against the Trust Act.
“Many councilors today said they cry for illegal aliens afraid to go to work or school,” Murray said. “Who amongst the City Council cries for the Bostonians overdosing, or addicted to heroin, fentanyl, and meth that came from Mexican drug cartels in partnership with Boston-area Dominican-organized crime families that are protected by the sanctuary policies known as the Trust Act?”
“How many federal agencies will exit our downtown business district,” he went on to state, “while you, the City Council and Mayor Wu, continue this charade that illegal alien criminals are somehow good for Boston?”
