It may not be obvious, but immigration enforcement agents are “very active” in Cambridge, police commissioner Christine Elow told city councillors Monday. Two weeks ago Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers took a person into custody when the individual left the police department building after being released on bail, Elow said.
In that case, “we had somebody in custody a couple of weeks ago, and we didn’t know their [immigration] status,” Elow said. “And Ice called and asked if they were still in custody. And we said, ’We don’t cooperate with Ice.’ And they waited outside of our police station, and when the person was released on bail, they picked them up.”
The disclosure came as Elow and city manager Yi-An Huang discussed worries stemming from a clash in Worcester on May 8, when city police were called to deal with a large crowd trying to prevent Ice agents from seizing a woman who was with two daughters, one of whom was holding a baby. The police action, including the arrest of one of the daughters, sparked a protest the next day.
Huang said a police video of the incident “was hard to watch.” Police and city officials are concerned about a similar situation occurring here because of mounting public outrage, he said.
“We have seen students detained for publishing op-eds critical of U.S. foreign policy then immediately moved out of state without informing family or lawyers. We have seen federal agencies detain people by mistake, deport them to foreign countries and then refuse to take any actions to correct the mistake, even after being ordered to by the Supreme Court,” Huang said. “We have seen social media being used selectively to identify individuals who were detained while other individuals detained were only located through the media checking the public log of detention facilities. At the highest levels, we are seeing senior federal officials speak of suspending habeas corpus, the foundational writ – meaning ‘show me the body’ – that requires law enforcement to present the detained person before a judge to justify their detention.”
Actions have “shattered trust”
The cascade of unjust actions has “shattered trust in due process, the rule of law and the legitimacy of immigration enforcement,” Huang said. “Without trust in federal agencies, our community is living in a state of fear and uncertainty, which I know is turning into anger, activism and a willingness to consider civil disobedience that has put us as local government officials responsible for local law enforcement in a bind.”
The bind comes from the conflict between Cambridge’s “welcoming city” ordinance, which forbids police from asking about a person’s immigration status or cooperating with Ice in enforcing immigration law, and police responsibility to keep the peace, Huang said. “Our ordinance, similar to Worcester, notes no officer or employee of the Cambridge Police Department may participate in an operation led by a federal agency to detain persons for deportation purposes, except in response to a request to assist with support services deemed necessary to ensure officer safety or to prevent a breach of the peace during a federal operation, such as request to establish traffic perimeters, control traffic or provide police escort,” he said.
“The reality is that the path to challenging an arrest has to happen through the courts rather than on the street, and I recognize that this is where the breakdown of trust and legitimacy is what makes this moment so difficult in the case of a significant confrontation between our local community and federal agents,” Huang said.
If Ice makes a public arrest
City officials worry that officers’ action to restore order will be seen as helping Ice. Councillors were also worried. “If we get called, and hopefully not, if we get called to do that, I don’t want people interpreting that as we’re helping Ice,” vice mayor Marc McGovern said. He asked Elow: “Can you make that distinction?”
Elow said police would try to make sure any crowd responding to Ice actions knows “explicitly that we’re there to keep the scene safe, but not to cooperate with Ice in any way, shape or form. We’re there for scene safety, and that’s it, not to do any federal immigration enforcement. And also just to try to deescalate the crowd.”
Officials want residents to know the city’s limitations. People need “to understand there is significant latitude that federal agents have to detain individuals in public spaces. The threshold is probable cause in a judicial administrative warrant is only required to enter private spaces, but not to make an arrest in the public domain,” Huang said. “Federal agents have significant latitude in how they plan and carry out operations, including whether they are wearing plain clothes or uniforms, wearing masks or not wearing masks, and a lot of that regulatory authority is out of our control as a municipality. Witnessing and documenting what is happening in public is allowed but acts to mislead or stop a federal operation can be prosecuted, and obstructing a federal operation is a significant violation.”
He said Cambridge is joining other communities to seek an opinion from Massachusetts attorney general Andrea Joy Campbell on what they can do if Ice enforcement actions result in resistance from residents.
Detainer requests
The Cambridge ordinance also forbids police to cooperate with Ice requests to keep someone in custody solely for immigration reasons past the time when he or she would be released. Ice makes these “detainer” requests so immigration agents have time to get to the location and can pick up the individual from custody.
Besides the city ordinance, the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that police, courts, prisons and jails aren’t allowed under state law to agree to the detainer requests.
Cambridge police have received “at least four” detainer requests and didn’t honor any, Elow said.
City law requires that police report to the council on detainers every six months, councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler pointed out. City solicitor Megan Bayer said the requirement “fell by the wayside” when little immigration enforcement actions were occurring.
Asked by CambridgeDay for the exact number of detainer requests police have received since Jan. 1, police said in a statement on May 22 that they have received “multiple” requests and are working to provide an accurate number;
Somerville abductions
City councilors in Somerville were reporting abductions by federal agents as long ago as March, after Tufts grad student Rumeysa Ozturk was taken off a city street. “It is not the only abduction that happened this past week,” councilor Naima Sait said at a March 27 meeting, followed by testimony from councilor J.T. Scott: “This is throughout our city, Ward 5, Ward 1, Ward 2, and it’s accelerating. The first abduction started happening a few weeks ago.”
The mayor of Somerville, Katjana Ballantyne, confirmed in a letter the next day that Ozturk was “of course not the only detainment we’ve seen in our community.” In addition, she said, “We must not look away from the steady removal of legal status from authorized immigrants – people who came here seeking refuge from harm and to contribute to our communities.”
After being asked in March for the city of Somerville to clarify and expand on the references to abductions, a spokesperson said the city had “not had confirmation from federal immigration officials of their exact activities despite our requests for information, but via eyewitness accounts and follow-up we are aware that immigrant residents and workers of our community have been detained. We are also closely monitoring media reports of immigration actions and new policies including the recent moves to cancel some student visas occurring nationally and in the Boston region with changed approaches to notices and justifications, which has been reported widely.”
Asked for specifics, the spokesperson said April 11 that they would look into the details and “send more once I have it,“ then sent nothing more.
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I am sorry to say it, but the city is failing us right now.
This is an extraordinary political moment. And it is very dangerous. And whatever obligation Huang or McGovern believe they have to Trump’s Gestapo, aka ICE, their obligation to their constituents must be much greater.
The reality is that challenging an abduction through the courts is often not possible! So hindering the Gestapo could make the difference between a parent never seeing their child again, and never getting due process.
Don’t ask us to just step aside.
^^^^^^^^
Please go ahead and resist. This is exactly what they want.
“Liberal terrorists impeding our brave officers” blah blah blah.
Record everything, resist nothing.
Soon the tide turns and all their bad shit will flow back onto them…..hopefully.
Only 1,340 days left!
https://presidentialtermclock.com/
“City officials worry that officers’ action to restore order will be seen as helping ICE.” Gee, I wonder why!
“Elow said police would try to make sure any crowd responding to Ice actions knows “explicitly that we’re there to keep the scene safe, but not to cooperate with Ice in any way, shape or form. We’re there for scene safety, and that’s it, not to do any federal immigration enforcement. And also just to try to deescalate the crowd.”
One way for Cambridge officers to do this is for them at the scene to put on rainbow masks. Why not? In Cambridge, the rainbow symbol functions like a peace sign, but has even broader meaning.
Armed Masked Men (and 90% of the time ICE agents wear face masks and do not have identifying info on their equipment) grab someone in front of the police station, do not show a warrant tor the police onsite or ID to the police and our police sit and do nothing? They could just as easily have been criminals disguised as ICE agents. They must be confronted and asked by the police to show a warrant as they have been known to illegally grab someone just based on their racial appearance, language spoken etc and to make big mistakes of identity and grabbed actual citizens!
This is very disturbing. Cambridge police should not be assisting ICE, even implicitly with “crowd control” or “de-escalation.” Any police assistance will only enable ICE to execute more seizures, knowing they are protected from resident resistance. Let ICE call on federal law enforcement if it needs such protection. The City Council should adopt a policy, and if necessary amend the Ordinance, to prohibit our police from any assistance with ICE operations, except to protect residents (not ICE) from violence or the threat of injury.
“no officer or employee of the Cambridge Police Department may participate in an operation led by a federal agency to detain persons for deportation purposes, except in response to a request to assist with support services deemed necessary to ensure officer safety or to prevent a breach of the peace during a federal operation, such as request to establish traffic perimeters, control traffic or provide police escort”
So they will help ICE agents illegally snatch people. People do also in fact have legal rights to resist unjust arrest. Our cities are so interested in enforcing the “rule of law” as practiced by fascists that they are willing to participate in flagrant violations of our rights.
Good germans…
“Can you make that distinction?”
No, because there is not one. It is clear the city officials are more interested in shielding themselves from accountability for helping ICE, than in ensuring at minimum city resources aren’t going to help the new gestapo, to say nothing of actively keeping our community safe from them.