Order meant to stop Cambridge police helping Ice gets put on pause by request of the officers’ union

Action by one city councillor on Monday postponed an effort to strengthen the city’s immigrant protection ordinance by narrowing the ways Cambridge police can assist federal agents – who might call for help controlling a crowd while trying to seize someone on immigration claims. 

Councillor Paul Toner said he was exercising his “charter right,” which delays consideration of the measure for one meeting, at the request of the Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Association, a union.

The union “wants to review and discuss this with the city manager and the police commissioner,” and “can do that this week,” Toner said in explaining his move. Exercising charter right stops consideration of a policy order immediately; Toner moved just after the lead sponsor of the measure, councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, had introduced it.

The police union did not reach out to Sobrinho-Wheeler about the policy order “or raise any of the concerns they shared with councillor Toner about this,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said.

The union didn’t answer an email Tuesday seeking an explanation.

The measure that was postponed asks city manager Yi-An Huang to report back to the council on amending the Welcoming Community Ordinance, which was adopted in 2020 to codify the city’s position that it won’t cooperate with immigration law enforcement actions, ask people for their immigration status or treat residents differently because of it.

One section of the ordinance, though, is an exception: The rule says Cambridge police won’t “take part in or assist with federal immigration enforcement operations,” 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 requests to establish traffic perimeters, control traffic or provide police escort.”

Citing “troubling developments”

Councillors Sobrinho-Wheeler, Sumbul Siddiqui and Patty Nolan introduced an order to change the exception clause by “clarifying that Cambridge city employees shall not participate in federal immigration enforcement operations and that the sole role of Cambridge city employees during any action by Ice is only to protect public safety and not to assist or facilitate the work of Ice, especially given that those actions may be unlawful.”

Introducing the measure, Sobrinho-Wheeler said the impetus was “troubling developments we’ve seen recently in Somerville and Worcester, with residents being kidnapped off the street by masked agents, folks breaking into cars and Ice agents breaking into people’s cars and pulling them out, defying court orders.” In an email, he said that “confirmation at our recent Cambridge City Council meeting that Ice is active in Cambridge, including in a detention here recently” also prompted the effort to amend the ordinance.

“The Worcester raid in particular raised questions about what the role of local police and other city employees should be in the event of a similar action here,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said. In Worcester, Ice agents called city police for help May 8 after a large crowd formed when Ice tried to detain a woman who was with two daughters, one of whom was carrying a baby; police arrested one of the daughters.

“In the light of those really troubling recent actions we heard from a lot of Cambridge residents who worried both about their own safety as well as the safety of their neighbors, and wondering about what the city can do to ensure their safety,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said at the council meeting.

Tracking federal actions

Part of the change in the ordinance that supporters want “is removing language in this ordinance that could be interpreted as allowing city employees to help Ice with traffic or crowd control, even when those federal agents are doing illegal things. There’s language in the ordinance that says our city employees could assist them with traffic control, crowd control. We should be 100 percent clear that that’s not the role of public safety. If federal Ice agents need traffic control, they need crowd control, they should be doing that themselves,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said.

The other change would require city employees to document “the actions of Ice” if they are called to an Ice enforcement action, including getting immigration agents’ badge numbers.

The city’s labor relations office does not recall negotiations with the police unions before the Welcoming Community Ordinance was adopted in 2020, city spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said.

The policy order that was postponed also called for the city to enforce an existing requirement: that the police report to the City Council every six months on Ice’s actions in the city, including requests that police hold suspects who are arrested so agents can pick them up for detention. City solicitor Megan Bayer said last month that enforcement “fell by the wayside” when there were few Ice actions.

Cambridge Day has asked police for the number of Ice detainer requests since Jan. 1; a police spokesperson said last month that the department is working on an answer.

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