Residents of East Somerville have been pushed into “hiding” by the federal government’s assault against immigrants, the City Council heard Thursday.
On the first day of his presidency, Donald Trump revived 27 defunct immigration policies and passed seven more, according to a ProPublica analysis. Aggressive enforcement of them has created “a real fear amongst both undocumented and naturalized American immigrants who are afraid of being mistaken for being undocumented,” Ward 1 councilor Matt McLaughlin said.
That hurts East Somerville’s businesses, three-quarters of which McLaughlin said are immigrant-owned. Daniel Bojorquez, who grew up in Sonora, Mexico, and owns La Brasa restaurant on Broadway, was introduced as speaking for several business owners who were afraid to speak out publicly – and who also worry that the drop in foot traffic will force them to close.
Restaurants such as Taco Loco are not making as much money because “the clientele is in hiding,” and this slowdown in business will ripple through the city, McLaughlin said.
“If you don’t think it affects you at all, it’s affecting our tax revenue. That will, in turn, affect our ability to serve this community,” McLaughlin said. “Immigrants are part of our economic engine.”
McLaughlin and Bojorquez had a simple request to people who want to help: Come eat in East Somerville, which the councilor said had “some of the best food in the entire city … You can get food from all over the world within walking distance.”
The culture of fear enshrouding East Somerville exacerbates existing problems. “I’ve been there for 11 years, and East Somerville always is being very isolated from the rest of the community,” Bojorquez said. “It’s where we are located, but also the fact there is a lot of, you know, immigrant community there.”
Sanctuary city status
Among the concerns of Somerville residents is the ramp-up of action by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Its newsroom highlights at least nine arrests made in Massachusetts since the beginning of February, just a few of the more than 11,000 arrests made by the agency nationwide under the Trump administration as of Wednesday. In just 23 days, that’s more than any one month between October 2023 and September, the last period for which the agency has made national statistics available.
Somerville is one of 14 cities in Massachusetts that have enacted some sort of “sanctuary” status. Though sanctuary cities have varying policies and sometimes go by different names, they are marked by protections for marginalized communities – often for immigrant communities, though Worcester declared itself a sanctuary for the transgender community on Tuesday.
“Somerville is a sanctuary city. It’s been that way since I was a child, and it’s always been a positive thing in this community,” McLaughlin said.
Somerville declared its sanctuary status in 1987, saying it would not discriminate on the basis of immigration status nor be required to provide information about residents’ immigration status to ICE, then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “Oppressed people,” the declaration said, with particular emphasis on Salvadoran, Haitian, Guatemalan, Brazilian and Irish migrants, would have rights equal to the rest of the Somerville population.
Separation of powers
Somerville passed a Welcoming City Ordinance in in 2019 affirming its sanctuary status and increasing protections by limiting inquiry as to naturalization status. The ordinance also limited cooperation with ICE: Somerville police may not take action on the basis of immigration status, detain on the basis of the agency’s detainers or warrants, nor participate in its force’s raids.
“The president cannot tell our police department to enforce their federal laws. We’re not going out having our police enforce Rico cases,” McLaughlin said, referring to a federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act used to prosecute organized crime crossing state lines. “And ICE is not here enforcing our traffic laws. There’s clear lines, and if we were to do their job for them, that would cost us money.”
Councilors also criticized ICE’s Boston branch for blaming Somerville in a situation that didn’t involve it: The release of Turkish national Berkan Karamurtlu, 27, after a Jan. 22 arrest on charges including assault and battery and witness intimidation. A Wednesday press release from Patricia Hyde, field office director of ICE’s Boston operations, said Somerville District Court didn’t observe a “detainer” submitted after an arraignment and released Karamurtlu “into the community. Unfortunately, he reoffended, resulting in a second arrest for assaulting an intellectually disabled resident.”
The Somerville District Court honored an agency detainer submitted after Karamurtlu’s second arraignment, leading to his arrest.
“The direction things are going”
“He was not arrested in Somerville. He’s not a Somerville resident. He went to a court in Somerville that we have no jurisdiction over,” said McLaughlin, who sponsored a welcoming-city affirmation Thursday to which every councilor signed onto as a sponsor. “I know that may be a strange concept to the president and people who don’t understand how court systems work, or have no respect for the courts. Our welcoming city ordinance has nothing to do with this guy being released.”
“To see a federal official make such a inaccurate statement is really concerning, and it shows you the direction things are going where half-truths are going to be put out there about our sanctuary city status in the hopes of harming us,” McLaughlin said.
Councilor Jake Wilson confirmed that, under the law, the police may not hold anyone on the basis of a civil warrant – only a criminal warrant signed by a judge.
“There’s a huge misconception,” McLaughlin said of sanctuary city status. “It does not mean that undocumented immigrants don’t get arrested. It does not mean that you can commit a felony and get let go and nothing will ever happen to you. It also doesn’t mean that we can necessarily always protect people who deserve our protection, unfortunately.”
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