City faith leaders told Mayor Michelle Wu there’s a lot of “fear” in the community, at a time when President Trump’s border czar is vowing to bring “hell” to Boston and Wu is prepping for a Congressional grilling over the Hub’s sanctuary policies.
Wu sat down with an array of religious leaders in the Civic Pavilion in City Hall Plaza Tuesday for a conversation that the mayor said was intended to inform the testimony she will provide Wednesday, March 5 to a Republican-led Congressional oversight committee, in Washington, D.C.
The mayor said her testimony would be focused, in part, on what it means to be a “city that is home to immigrants” — a designation that she and faith leaders taking part in the discussion described as being under attack by today’s federal policies.
“I am hearing a lot of fear in community,” Wu said. “I’m hearing the tangible impacts about a lot of the policies and what is accurate, what is inaccurate, all kind of swirling around … Even those who have legal status in this country are just scared because of the swirl of what might happen.”
Wu, along with the mayors of Chicago, Denver and New York City, was ordered to appear before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is probing sanctuary city policies and their impact on public safety.
Referencing the invite sent by Committee Chair James Comer last month, Wu said “the frame of the letter was that we are in violation of laws and general principles by having the Trust Act in place and being a so-called sanctuary city” as taken from a “particular view that we are shielding certain people from accountability.”
Boston’s sanctuary status is enshrined in the Boston Trust Act, a 2014 local law that prohibits city police and other departments from cooperating with federal authorities on civil immigration detainers.
Wu and other city officials say the Trust Act still allows for cooperation with the feds, namely ICE, when it comes to certain criminal matters, and have pushed back on assertions that the city’s sanctuary polices have impacted public safety.
The mayor, who is running for re-election, has touted last year’s low homicide rate as proof that her administration’s policies have made Boston the “safest major city” in the country.
Faith leaders made similar statements at the day’s roundtable discussion, while emphasizing that they see a federal immigration crackdown — which has focused on sanctuary cities like Boston — as negatively impacting public safety, rather than improving it.
“I think your message to the oversight committee is there are impacts and what they’re doing is going to create more havoc in public safety,” Rev. Willie Bodrick II of the Historic Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, said. “There will be huge impacts economically for the city and possibly the creation of a public safety issue.
“It’s going to create fear. It’s going to create a frenzy. People are going to hide.”
While noting today’s fear in Boston’s immigrant community, the religious leaders also struck a defiant tone at times.
That was most evident when they were addressing border czar Tom Homan’s vow last weekend to bring “hell” to Boston after the city’s Police Commissioner Michael Cox, per Homan, said he’d “double down on not helping law enforcement officers of ICE.”
“We have to make clear to the oversight committee that the fear is far-reaching,” Arlene Hall, lead pastor of the Deliverance Temple Worship Center in Dorchester, said. “This is real.
“Whoever will come here to Boston to bring hell, we are from heaven,” she said, “and the last time I checked, that’s the authority.”