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Boston Mayor Wu signs executive order compelling President Trump to reveal ICE's 'secret police tactics'

Gayla Cawley, Boston Herald on

Published in News & Features

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu signed an executive order that seeks to put pressure on the Trump administration to shed light on ICE’s “secret police tactics” that she says have been used in the city and country as part of the feds’ immigration crackdown.

Wu said Tuesday that the city will be pressing for greater transparency by “regularly” filing requests for public records with the Department of Homeland Security through the Freedom of Information Act, “in response to the secret police tactics that have been deployed across the country in immigration enforcement.”

“Here, in Boston, we know how to keep our community safe,” Wu said. “Our public safety statistics tell the whole story that not only do we have the lowest statistics around violence of any major city in the country, rates of gun violence, of homicide and other major crimes are at the lowest recorded levels of Boston’s history as well.

“This is because of decades of partnership and of important changes that have been made to ensure that our officers uphold the trust and transparency and accountability that we have been bestowed by residents in Boston,” the mayor added. “Our officers wear badges. They do not routinely wear masks. We are clear about the reasons for potential arrests or interactions.”

Wu, who announced her executive order while flanked by many city and state officials and community advocates at City Hall, said her administration will be seeking records that disclose who federal immigration authorities are arresting, detaining, and deporting, and on what grounds those actions are being taken.

That information has largely not been provided to the city, Wu said, which has been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration for months due to its sanctuary status and limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Wu acknowledged that her executive order is not necessarily enforceable, and that the city can’t compel the federal government to act on its demands for more information on local immigration enforcement activity.

“The city government cannot overrule what they’re doing, but it’s still important to tell the truth, and it’s still important to be clear about what we expect from our federal government,” Wu said. “My advice to (border czar) Tom Homan and ICE is to take a time out, reassess what you are doing and how you are doing it.

“The American people are not stupid,” she added. “No one is buying the line that these secret police tactics are making communities safer.”

 

Wu’s executive order comes after her war of words last week with federal officials, including Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah Foley, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, and the Trump White House over her initial description of masked ICE agents as “secret police,” and later comparison of ICE to a neo-Nazi group.

It also comes amid a sweep of ICE raids in Los Angeles, where anti-ICE protestors have faced off against city, state and federal enforcement after President Donald Trump declared the city in a state of rebellion and deployed the National Guard.

Massachusetts unions held an “emergency rally” on Boston City Hall Plaza Monday to condemn the ICE raids and the arrest of a local SEIU union president in Los Angeles over the weekend. California’s governor has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for “unlawfully” federalizing the state’s National Guard.

In Boston, Wu has criticized masked ICE agents for “snatching” people off the street, without telling them where they’re going or providing “justification for why they are being taken.”

The feds say their immigration authorities are enforcing federal law and clearly announce themselves, and have accused Wu and other politicians of putting ICE agents in danger, and getting activists riled up with their “rhetoric.”

“Federal agents in marked jackets and vests are masking their faces because people like Mayor Wu have created false narratives about their mission,” Foley said last week. “Federal agents and their children are being threatened, doxxed and assaulted. That is why they must hide their faces.”

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