Editorial: Boston makes it easy to be in US illegally

Boston Herald, Boston Herald on Mar 14, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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Boston has a message for all those new citizens sworn in every year at naturalization ceremonies around town: Why bother?

If you’re here illegally, the mayor and city council will bend over backward to make sure you face no consequences for your actions.

The Boston City Council held a community-based hearing where advocates pushed for expansion of the Trust Act. The 2014 local law bars city police and other departments from cooperating with federal authorities on civil immigration detainers, and was reaffirmed unanimously by the City Council last December.

It’s a fancy way of saying We Don’t Snitch.

It would have been good to have the Boston Police Department’s take on this, but they weren’t invited to the hearing. Which is a shame, because Councilor Ed Flynn had sponsored an order for the hearing regarding discrepancies in civil immigration detainer requests that were reported as being ignored last year by the Boston Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

BPD Commissioner Michael Cox said his department refused to act on all 15 civil detainer requests it received last year, an ICE spokesperson told the Herald in January that Boston Police ignored 198 detainer requests from the feds that involved “egregious crime.”

But the Trust (Us Not to Help the Feds) Act is all about keeping illegal immigrants from living in fear of being deported for being here illegally, no matter the cost.

And it’s cost the taxpayers dearly, the most recent addition to the tab being Mayor Michelle Wu’s $650,000 legal bill to help her prepare for a congressional hearing on sanctuary cities. Wu defended the cost, saying it was necessary amid threats to put her in jail and cut the Hub’s federal funding.

She was compelled to testify in D.C. alongside three other sanctuary city mayors from Chicago, Denver and New York City. A letter sent to each mayor by oversight committee Chair James Comer, R-KY, stated that the committee was “investigating sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States and their impact on public safety and the effectiveness of federal efforts to enforce” the country’s “immigration laws.”

Immigration laws mean little in progressive cities. Leaders don’t like them, and will make sure local law enforcement lets calls from the feds go to voice mail when they seek help with detainers.

So why bother taking all the proper steps to becoming a U.S. citizen when places like Boston exist? Why go through the efforts of obtaining a green card, living here as a permanent resident for five years, learning to read, write and speak English, passing a civics exam, filling out forms and going through interviews when Boston leaders are more than willing to let illegal immigrants skirt the law?

Mayor Wu insists that “we follow the laws in Boston.”

And for those who don’t, who flout federal immigration law? We’ll keep quiet so as not to lose their trust.

It’s an odd lesson in civics, and one that may come back to bite the city. And a slap in the face to all newly sworn-in citizens who followed the law.

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