Boston Mayor Michelle Wu at the center of debate surrounding Trump's mass deportation plans

BOSTON — Boston Mayor Michelle Wu continues to be in the national spotlight after she vowed and doubled down that the city will not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement when President-elect Trump regains office.

“The Five” on Fox News spoke at length Wednesday about Wu and other elected officials who have said they will continue to protect illegal immigrants who live in their cities and states amid Donald Trump’s mass deportation threat.

“We have the solution: We send them to Mayor Michelle Wu’s house,” Greg Gutfeld said. “If she’s vowing not to cooperate with deporting illegal aliens, now we know where to send them. We send them not to their cities but to their homes.”

“I’ll pay for the bus tickets, I am happy to do that,” he continued. “If Wu wants to be a hero under her fake virtue signaling then she should absorb both the risk and responsibility for the public stance that she’s taking.”

Earlier Wednesday, Wu offered another rebuke to incoming border czar Tom Homan saying she’s “not very smart” and needs to educate herself on federal immigration law. It is a crime to harbor and conceal illegal immigrants from a law enforcement officer, Homan has said repeatedly.

During at hearing at the State House, the mayor reiterated, “Our public safety record speaks for itself: We are the safest major city in America, here in Boston.” Wu touted that the city’s homicide rates are “among the lowest of any city nationally,” and “gun violence has been at an all-time historic low over the last two years.”

The mayor has been at the epicenter of the debate surrounding Trump’s mass deportation push since she appeared on WCVB’s “On the Record” last weekend. During the segment, she cited Boston’s status as a sanctuary city under the Trust Act, which limits the city’s cooperation with some federal immigration laws.

The Trust Act, passed in 2014 under Mayor Marty Walsh, prohibits city police and other departments from cooperating with ICE when it comes to detaining immigrants on civil warrants, while still allowing for cooperation in criminal matters like human trafficking and cyber crimes.

“The federal government does what the federal government does,” Wu said on Wednesday. “And no city has the authority to override that. Elections have consequences. But we were also elected here in Boston to do what we do and to focus on our work at the local level.”

Trump has confirmed his intention to declare a national emergency as a pretext for using the military in his plans to round up and deport more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

The president-elect has frequently promised to begin the “largest mass deportation event” in the nation’s history when he regains office in January, and he has appointed Homan to lead those efforts.

“I think there’s a little bit of talking out of both sides of their mouth,” Wu said of the Trump administration’s plans, “in both saying they’re only prioritizing cases of extreme concern and criminal activity, while also describing it as mass deportation as a premier campaign promise. Those two are not the same. And what we hear, what our community members hear, is mass deportation.”

The mayor added, “We are reaching out to our broader community to say ‘Here are the spaces where the city of Boston does not interact with, and does not communicate around immigration status, so you know you are safe in accessing public safety at the local level, in bringing your kid to school, in coming to our community centers.’”

Also on Wednesday, Venezuelan national Jose Ibarra was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for raping and killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley last February.

Prosecutors said Ibarra encountered Riley while she was running on the University of Georgia campus on Feb. 22 and killed her during a struggle.

Gutfeld connected Wu’s stance to the case that became a flashpoint in the national debate over immigration.

“Wu and others should consider themselves lucky that Ibarra wasn’t sent to Boston where she could’ve been nearly raped and murdered,” Gutfeld said. “It’s amazing that a woman could take that kind of a stance in a situation where another woman is murdered.”

Judge Jeannine Piro added: “She’s defying this mass deportation push with a lot of the others because it’s causing fear and yet what she’s doing is she’s protecting convicted felons. … Are they anti-American or just pro-illegal?”

The Massachusetts Republican Party condemned Wu’s stance on Thursday, arguing the decision to ignore ICE detainers “endangers Boston residents.”

Detainers request that local or state law enforcement “maintain custody of the noncitizen for a period not to exceed 48 hours beyond the time the individual would otherwise be released.”

Per the state Supreme Judicial Court’s so-called “Lunn” ruling in 2017, courts lack the authority to “arrest and hold an individual solely (based on) a federal civil immigration detainer, beyond the time that the individual would otherwise be entitled to be released from State custody.”

“Democrats’ preference towards pandering to their most extreme base is putting residents at risk,” MassGOP Chairwoman Amy Carnevale said in a statement. “This policy is out of control and completely nonsensical.”

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