The Department of Homeland Security’s published list of “sanctuary” jurisdictions is being met with criticism — from Democratic leaders in the Boston area to conservatives in places that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump.
The list claims that the entire state of Massachusetts, 13 of its 14 counties (excluding Hampden County), and 12 municipalities are sanctuary jurisdictions, which the DHS said “are determined by factors like compliance with federal law enforcement, information restrictions, and legal protections for illegal aliens.”
Gov. Maura Healey has said that Massachusetts is “not a sanctuary state.”
Lunn v. Commonwealth, a 2017 decision by the Supreme Judicial Court, ruled that Massachusetts law does not allow anyone to be held in state custody beyond the time they would otherwise have been released “solely on the basis of a Federal civil immigration detainer.”
“A civil detainer is a request from ICE to keep a person in custody until ICE agents can arrest them. Similar to an administrative warrant, a civil detainer is issued by ICE — not a judge. Lunn does not limit state and local law enforcement from acting in accordance with state law to protect public safety; it simply makes clear that federal civil detainers are not themselves legal grounds for detention,” the office of Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell explained in a guide titled “KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: ICE Enforcement.”
The actions by federal immigration agents have some community members staying home and avoiding being in public.
The Massachusetts cities and towns on the list include Amherst, Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Concord, Holyoke, Lawrence, Newton, Northampton, Orleans, Somerville and Springfield.
“We are exposing these sanctuary politicians who harbor criminal illegal aliens and defy federal law,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “President Trump and I will always put the safety of the American people first.”
But leaders in some of those places are pushing back.
“Boston follows all the laws, and so to say that we’re on a list of cities that doesn’t follow federal law is just false,” Mayor Michelle Wu said Friday. “We follow our city’s Trust Act, we follow state law, and we do, in fact, work every day with the federal government on issues when there is a clear criminal situation.”
“Sanctuary cities do not protect undocumented people who commit crimes,” said Cambridge Vice Mayor Marc McGovern. “If you commit a crime in the city of Cambridge, and you are undocumented, you get arrested, you get processed, you go to court — it’s all the same thing as if for a documented person.”
It wasn’t only blue states and districts that were affected. The Associated Press reported that enthusiastic supporters of the White House were left wondering why they were on the list.
The mayor of Huntington Beach, California, which sued to challenge the state’s immigration law and passed a resolution this year proclaiming it a “non-sanctuary city,” said it was “negligent.”
“You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document — somebody’s got to answer to that,” said Mayor Pat Burns.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
