What we know about the deployment of Border Patrol agents in Boston, and the local backlash against it
"Using highly trained SWAT teams as mere decoration in order to showcase the might of immigration authorities is nothing but a wasteful attempt to menace our communities."
President Donald Trump’s administration is deploying elite Border Patrol agents to cities across the country this month in response to sanctuary policies that limit the ability of local law enforcement to assist federal deportation efforts.
Federal officials say the plan is meant to help local Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers crack down on crime in places where they receive little cooperation from local police. But in Boston, one of the so-called sanctuary cities targeted by the move, elected officials say the deployment of SWAT team-like agents will actually make communities less safe.
“Policies aimed at sowing division and fear are ultimately counterproductive and harmful not merely to the families and individuals who are targeted but to the broader community of which we are all a part,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said in a statement Friday night.
What’s happening in the Boston area:
The New York Timesfirst broke the news Friday
evening that Customs and Border Protection was deploying 100 officers, including members of the Border Patrol’s elite tactical unit known as BORTAC, to boost Immigration and Customs Enforcement — a fellow agency within the Department of Homeland Security tasked with enforcing immigration laws within, as opposed to at, the country’s borders — in a number of so-called sanctuary cities beginning this month through May.
According to CBP’s website, the agents are trained like the military’s overseas special forces and conduct operations “both in the United States and in other countries in furtherance of the U.S. Border Patrol’s mission.” However, BORTAC agents won’t be busting down doors or engaging in shootouts in sanctuary cities. Rather, the Times reports that they will assist ICE on “run-of-the-mill immigration arrests,” which are generally civil violations.
Sanctuary cities are municipalities that have policies that direct local police to ignore requests from ICE for undocumented immigrants to be detained for the sake of deportation, unless the person has been charged with a serious crime (simply being in the country illegally generally doesn’t count).
For example, Boston’s Trust Act prohibits local police from working with ICE “solely for civil immigration enforcement purposes,” but allows them to cooperate on cases involving serious crimes, including human trafficking, child exploitation, drug and weapons trafficking, and cyber-crimes. The idea behind the policy is to foster trust between local immigrant communities and public safety officials; research has found that both undocumented and documented immigrants are less likely to report crimes if they fear that police will question them or others about their legal status.
However, such sanctuary policies have clashed with Trump’s hardline approach to immigration enforcement. And in a statement Friday, a DHS spokesperson said that “ICE does not have sufficient resources to effectively manage the sustained increase in non-detained cases which is exacerbated by the rise of sanctuary jurisdictions.” According to the Times, agents are also being sent to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, Detroit, and Newark, New Jersey — all of which have similar sanctuary policies.
WBUR subsequently reported Friday that specially trained Border Patrol agents were already in Boston, though DHS declined to say the number.
“While some of them are trained in tactical operations, that is one of the many areas of training,” the department said in a statement to WBUR. “These officers have also been trained in routine immigration enforcement actions which is what they have been asked to do.”
The announcement came as ICE’s field office in Boston separately released the names Friday of five undocumented immigrants facing criminal charges in the Boston area, who had been released after the agency’s detainer requests were ignored. Todd Lyons, the acting field office director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Boston, also noted Friday that while a 2017 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court bans local police from honoring detainer requests, they could still notify ICE when an undocumented immigrant is released from custody.
“ERO Boston from this day forward will continue to notify the public when a criminal threat is released back into their neighborhoods,” Lyons said.
According to MassLive, the alleged crimes included violent felonies, ranging from assault and battery to child rape. However, local prosecutors have argued it’s better to handle such cases locally, rather than deport the suspects.
“We want to hold serious offenders accountable regardless of their immigration status,” Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said last August. “This means keeping the accused here for their prosecution and incarceration, not allowing a defendant to evade the reach of our laws by being returned to his or her country of origin prior to trial and completion of any sentence. This is especially true in cases of child sexual assault. We owe that much to the survivors as well as the communities we serve.”
Despite evidence that sanctuary policies are associated with reduced crime rates, the Trump administration and other critics have highlighted individual cases in which undocumented immigrants whose detainer requests were ignored went on to either commit other crimes or flee the country.
“When sanctuary cities release these criminals back to the street, it increases the occurrence of preventable crimes, and more importantly, preventable victims,” Matthew Albence, the acting director of ICE, said in a statement Friday, according to the Times.
How are local officials responding?
Still, the move to deploy militarized Border Patrol agents was swiftly condemned by local Democratic elected officials and immigration advocates.
“Let us be clear, this move has nothing to do with public safety, but rather serves only to further the Trump Administration’s agenda to intimidate and retaliate against cities that uphold the dignity and humanity of our immigrant neighbors,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Boston Democrat, said in a statement Friday night, calling on city officials to “affirm that we will not comply or cooperate with this abuse of power.”
In his statement, Walsh said that the low crime rate in Boston (not to mention in neighboring cities) was evidence that “it’s possible to decrease crime while being a city that is welcoming to everyone.”
“What we need – and have needed for a long time – is a sound, rational national immigration policy rooted in both compassion and common sense,” said the mayor. “Never forget that at the root of this issue are human beings.”
What we need – and have needed for a long time – is a sound, rational national immigration policy rooted in both compassion and common sense. Never forget that at the root of this issue are human beings.
— Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) February 14, 2020
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey sent a letter Saturday to federal immigration officials questioning the “unnecessary, unwelcome, and dangerous” operation.
“The real explanation for this deployment appears to be that President Trump and his Administration are attempting to punish Americans cities that reject his misguided immigration policies,” the two Democratic senators wrote, citing the Republican president’s previous efforts to block sanctuary cities from getting certain federal grants.
In the letter, they raised questions about the need for “heavily armed, military-like personnel in our cities,” how it would affect personnel levels at the southern border, and whether the 2020 census count, which will also occur this spring, would be impacted.
“Using highly trained SWAT teams as mere decoration in order to showcase the might of immigration authorities is nothing but a wasteful attempt to menace our communities,” Warren and Markey wrote.
Eva A. Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said that the group has been working to restore immigrant families’ trust in public institutions in the face of the Trump’s administration’s “inflammatory rhetoric.” Millona hoped that the news Friday wouldn’t have significant impact, given the legal limits on BORTAC’s activities.
“We hope that this CBP deployment is mostly a publicity stunt, and we won’t see aggressive, paramilitary operations in our communities, which would be dangerous and deeply traumatic,” she said in a statement. “We call on our elected officials and law enforcement to defend our right to protect our communities in accordance with Massachusetts laws and Massachusetts values.”
State lawmakers recently held a hearing on a bill that would limit communication between local law enforcement and ICE officials across Massachusetts, which has garnered opposition from Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.
In the wake of the news Friday, a spokeswoman for Baker — who has supported local officials’ right to implement sanctuary policies — told the Globe that his administration “believes federal law enforcement should focus on taking dangerous criminals off the streets and has proposed legislation to allow local and state law enforcement to work with federal officials to detain individuals convicted of violent crimes.”
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