A City Council committee took a step this week toward strengthening Cambridge’s welcoming community ordinance, which bars cooperating with immigration enforcement actions, and voted to send the amended rule to the full council for action when it holds its special summer session Monday.
The discussion on the amendment, which is weaker than originally proposed, exposed a high level of fear and helplessness, even while councillors and those who commented deplored Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ behavior.
“As we’ve said several times, this is a horrible and scary time,” said vice mayor Marc McGovern at the Ordinance Committee hearing on the amendment held Monday. “And I say that as somebody who isn’t afraid of being stopped” by Ice agents.
Councillor Patty Nolan responded to critics who said the amendment could have been stronger, saying: “The city is standing up quite firmly to assert what it is that we are trying to do to protect our people.” Going further, such as requiring police to ask Ice agents for identification, “would put our officers at risk. It would also actually put our community at risk and put our city at risk.”
“And we have to acknowledge we are in dangerous times. We are in really terrible position that is excruciating to realize that this could be happening on our streets and we are not even able to direct our officers to arrest someone who doesn’t show ID, but that is the position we’re in,” Nolan said.
Omissions and clarifications
The approved version of the amendment omits a clause in the original proposal that would have required city police to ask Ice agents for their names and badge numbers if police are called to an Ice action. The reason for the omission is that police officers, acting through their union, said they feared they would be accused of interfering with Ice – a crime. And the agents don’t have to provide the information anyway, McGovern and city solicitor Megan Bayer pointed out.
The changes do clarify that if city police respond to an Ice action, “the police department’s role is to be there to protect the public safety, the safety of all on scene, not in any way to do the work of federal agents,” Bayer said. Language suggesting that police could exercise “crowd control” or escort immigration agents to safety was removed.
The changes also say police leaders will try to determine if the agents are who they say they are, and not imposters. Bayer said higher-ups were chosen for that task, as a way to protect patrol officers.
While councillors and Bayer spoke of shielding police officers from potential liability, some civilians are reportedly doing what officers were said to fear – asking Ice agents for identification, as well as the identity of the people Ice is detaining – when immigration agents conduct an action in Cambridge.
Luce acts on Ice reports
One resident who spoke during public comment on the amended ordinance said he volunteers as a “verifier” for the Luce Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts, which operates a hotline for people to report suspected Ice action. Luce then tries to confirm the report and can publicize it. CambridgeDay is not publishing the person’s name because he said it would jeopardize his safety.
The speaker said he and other volunteers check on reports of Ice action in Cambridge when the Luce hotline notifies them of a call. “A couple of us, 20-something-year-olds, will jog over, record what activity we see and attempt to ask the agents for details, such as who they are, who from our community they are taking and where they’re being disappeared to,” he said. “Our questions are almost always ignored by Ice agents, and usually our verifiers experience some serious intimidation along the way.”
“I was ecstatic when I heard that Cambridge police may be joining us in this verifying activity. Our police force has significant funding, can actually respond 24/7 and our uniformed officers have an added level of legitimacy for interacting with federal agents,” he said. “I’ve heard some reports that Cambridge police officers are afraid, and you know what? That’s fair. I’m scared too.”
He said that as far as he knows, the civilian Luce verifiers “are the only organized group in Cambridge who are actively attempting to document the activities of Ice’s gestapolike actions.” In an interview after the hearing, the person declined to say how many immigration enforcement actions Luce has verified in Cambridge, saying that only Luce leaders could provide that information. He promised to pass along the reporter’s contact information; Cambridge Day has not heard from Luce.
Speakers at the hearing who supported the amendment included Laura Rotolo of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and former city councillor David Sullivan, the only one still living of four councillors who sponsored the original “sanctuary city” ordinance in April 1985. That measure said the city would welcome and protect migrants fleeing repression in Haiti, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Gone from Cambridge
Five people with ties to Cambridge have been arrested by Ice, according to reports. Leidy Torres Castano of Revere was arrested by city police in May for alleged misdemeanor shoplifting and assault in a Central Square store. Ice probably learned of Castano’s arrest when police routinely checked her fingerprints with an FBI database, police said; the FBI data can be accessed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Police refused to answer an Ice agent who asked whether Castano was still being held at police headquarters after her arrest, police commissioner Christine Elow said. The federal agents waited outside the building and were seen arresting Castano after she was released without bail, police said. Cambridge Day could not find out from a federal website for searching the location of detainees where Castano was sent.
Four workers – three chefs at a Central Square restaurant and one at another restaurant outside the city that is under the same ownership – were detained in June, but not in Cambridge, the restaurant owner said. Three were arrested at an MBTA station in East Boston and the fourth at an apartment outside the city, when Ice agents were looking for a target and everyone ran out, the owner said.
The owner said this month that three of the workers have been deported to Colombia and one is free on bail while he seeks a work permit.
“Well-being” and detainers
Laura McMurry of Protecting Our Democracy, which she said is a working group of Indivisible Progressive Mass Cambridge, helped organize a City Hall rally July 22 in support of those who have been detained. She spoke at the hearing in favor of the amendment to the ordinance and reminded councillors that a petition circulated at the rally asks that the council establish a mechanism to check on the “well-being” of the chefs and Castano as well as people who live or work in Cambridge who are detained in the future. The goal is to keep the detainees from “being ‘disappeared.’” So far there has been no move from councillors to carry out what the petition seeks.
Although police commissioner Elow has said Ice has been active in Cambridge, there is little specific public information about its activity.
The welcoming community ordinance requires police to report details on detainer requests and other immigration enforcement to the council’s Public Safety Committee every six months. Reports stopped several years ago. Bayer said in a letter on the ordinance amendments to city manager Yi-An Huang that the police department plans to start submitting the information in September and will continue to file a report every six months.
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I hope that our police are aware of the news pieces from outside our state where criminals have disguised themselves as ICE and raided businesses in order to rob them and extort money from employees and customers that have come out in the media, and also that there have been cases of Bounty Hunters also disguised as ICE grabbing random people based on racial profiling in other states to deliver to ICE for a fee to meet quotas on arrests. ICE has also grabbed LEGAL immigrants, residents and actual Citizens in recent months ignoring documentation shown of such. How are they going to protect citizens here from these sorts of events?