Boston Mayor Michelle Wu made it clear Tuesday that town has no intention of complying with a federal order to start dismantling its sanctuary protections for unlawful immigrants, saying that the Trump administration is “wrong” on the difficulty.
Surrounded by an enormous crowd of group leaders, residents, and elected officers sympathetic to native immigration protections from federal mass deportation efforts, Wu stated she was greater than keen to satisfy the Tuesday deadline imposed for her response to a Division of Justice letter, however her cooperation ended there.
“We’re here today because last week Boston received a letter from the Attorney General of the United States on official letterhead from the federal government, threatening to prosecute city officials and withhold federal funds unless we cooperate with carrying out mass deportations,” Wu stated at a press convention she convened on Metropolis Corridor Plaza.
“The U.S. Attorney General asked for a response today, so here it is,” the mayor stated. “Stop attacking our cities to hide your administration’s failures. Unlike the Trump administration, Boston follows the law, and Boston will not back down from who we are or what we stand for. We will not back away from our community that has made us the safest city in the country.”
Wu, who was accused by Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi final week of violating federal regulation by means of the Boston Belief Act, which limits native cooperation with federal immigration authorities, sought to painting the Trump administration as unconstitutionally interfering with town authorities’s authority to implement public security.
She additionally talked about, in a proper written response to Bondi on Tuesday, that the Trump administration’s “false and continuous” assaults on Boston and different cities, together with efforts to slash federal funding and deploy “military personnel” to metropolis streets, had been “unprecedented” and illegal.
Mentioning the president’s deployment of the Nationwide Guard in current months to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Wu stated Boston was ready ought to the federal authorities search to intervene within the metropolis’s regulation enforcement efforts.
“We also stand with those cities as they sue over his abuse and power,” Wu stated. “Now we have reviewed these circumstances and we’re ready to face up for our metropolis’s rights if we have to.
“These attacks all come back to a common aim: The Trump administration seeks to divide, isolate and intimidate our cities and make Americans fearful of one another,” the mayor added. “Boston will never back down from being a beacon of freedom and a home for everyone.”
Lawyer Normal Bondi final week hit Boston’s mayor and different leaders of cities and states recognized by the Division of Justice as sanctuary jurisdictions with a letter ordering them to, by Tuesday, share how they deliberate to instantly start dismantling native immigration protections.
Bondi’s letter despatched to Wu final week characterizes Boston’s sanctuary insurance policies as a risk to nationwide safety.
“For too long, so-called sanctuary jurisdiction policies have undermined this necessary cooperation and obstructed federal immigration enforcement, giving aliens cover to perpetrate crimes in our communities and evade the immigration consequences that federal law requires,” Bondi wrote. “This ends now.”
Bondi ordered Wu to submit a response that confirms her “commitment to complying with federal law” and figuring out fast steps to “eliminate laws, policies and practices that impede federal immigration enforcement.”
Questioned about Wu’s remarks, the AG’s workplace referred the Herald to remarks Bondi made on Kudlow on Fox Business Community Monday, with reference to what penalties Boston will face for defying the federal order.
“They have sanctuary policies here in D.C. no longer,” Bondi stated. “So final week, I despatched out 32 letters to mayors across the nation and I imagine to seven governors telling them, you higher comply otherwise you’re subsequent. In the event that they don’t adjust to us, we’re going to work with our different companies to chop off their federal funding.
“We are going to send in law enforcement just like we did during the LA riots, just like we’re doing here in Washington, D.C. And if they’re not going to keep their citizens safe, Donald Trump will keep them safe.”
Bondi’s workplace added that the Division of Justice has filed lawsuits towards Los Angeles, New York State, Colorado, Illinois, town of Rochester, New York, and a number of other New Jersey cities “to invalidate unconstitutional sanctuary policies.”
Wu was one in all 4 mayors to testify earlier than a GOP-led Congressional oversight committee final March on sanctuary insurance policies and was referred to the DOJ for prison prosecution.
“To all the federal officials attacking communities that embody diversity, creativity and moral clarity, we mayors said this in D.C. nearly six months ago, and I’ll say it again today: You are wrong on the law and you are wrong on safety,” Wu stated.
Wu advised reporters after the press convention that she by no means heard again on whether or not the DOJ deliberate to behave on a Home Republican’s referral for her prosecution, however stated that, regardless of the dearth of follow-up, she takes such repeated threats critically.
“This is the full weight of the federal government of the United States of America, targeting and threatening jurisdictions across this country unconstitutionally and in violation of federal laws, and, in this case, of state and city law as well,” Wu stated. “This is a very serious matter, and we are going to continue to stand up for Boston.”
U.S. Senator Ed Markey characterised the Trump administration’s determination to “pick a fight” with Boston’s elected leaders as “political theater,” in his remarks on the press convention, which extra carefully resembled a Wu reelection marketing campaign rally, and opened with a dwell Spanish-music efficiency.
Metropolis Council President Ruthzee Louijeune, the primary Haitian-American elected to the Council, led chants of “Whose city? Our city” and dismissed the Trump administration’s portrayal of sanctuary insurance policies leading to increased crime as a “lie.”
“Our immigrant communities are here, are working, and are contributing to our community, to our city, every day, to our tax base, to our hospitals, to our schools, and they are making our city safer every single day,” Louijeune stated. “We is not going to imagine the lie and the hype about crime.
“We know … that he is using the fear of crime to hide the fact that he cannot deliver for the American people, that he is failing every single day.”
Josh Kraft, Wu’s principal mayoral opponent, took the same tack because the mayor and her political allies, describing the feds’ sanctuary ultimatum as “just another unhinged attack targeting our nation’s immigrants, who comprise the backbone of our economy and our communities.”
Initially Revealed:
