Panicked, Somerville City Council is ready to take action reaffirm holy city statusis currently developing strategies on how to avoid President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport immigrants.

A city councilman who said he had experience helping immigrants avoid federal authorities prompted the city’s immigration affairs director to warn council members “to proceed with extreme caution in these times.”

The council sent a resolution to the legislative affairs committee Thursday notifying the legislative affairs committee of the reapproval, with approval scheduled for later this month. Somerville, a holy city Refuses to cooperate since 1987 federal immigration enforcement over the decades since.

Speaking about the resolution Thursday night, Assemblyman Jesse Clingan described Trump protecting immigrant residents with what he called “back-channel activism” during his previous presidency.

That effort includes working with the Welcome Project, a city-based immigrant advocacy organization, in 2017 to provide alerts when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials may be in the area, Clingan said.

He specifically mentioned seeing ICE waiting outside the Somerville courthouse to take individuals away “during those terrible times.”

“It’s beyond what we can do legally,” Clingan said. “I encourage community members to stand together and unite against this type of hate and these actions against our community.”

Maria Teresa Nagel, director of SomerViva, the city’s Department of Immigrant Affairs, said reaffirming sanctuary status “sends a very loud message” that it will thwart fear tactics that seek to undermine the city’s commitment to immigrant residents.

But Clingan’s comments prompted Nagel to warn council members to “be very careful about strategies we might want to share publicly.”

“We want to show support,” he said, “We want to be very strategic about what we communicate, but we also want to make sure that the things we make public are not then used against our community.”

The resolution commits Somerville to continue to maintain a legal services stabilization fund that provides legal representation to residents facing deportation or deportation.

It directs city departments, including police and schools, not to apply for or accept federal funds that require the collection or sharing of information on national origin, immigration or citizenship status “for targeting or deportation purposes.”

Somerville, home to about 80,500 residents, about 24% of whom were born outside the country, has been a sanctuary city since 1987, two years after its neighbor Cambridge became the first Bay State municipality to enact the designation.

Six other municipalities scattered across the Bay State have also enacted sanctuary provisions in the past decade: Amherst, Boston, Concord, Lawrence, Newton and Northampton.

Somerville City Councilman Lance Davis said he supported the resolution introduced Thursday but requested amendments that would change the language of the text with minor changes such as acknowledging how the council reaffirmed sanctuary status in 2019.

The director of immigration affairs and council members described feeling that the city and county were heading into “very dark” and “troubled times” with Trump’s return to the White House.

“The City of Somerville has a proud, long-standing history of welcoming and supporting generations of immigrants and has consistently upheld the values ​​of equity, inclusion and support for all community members,” the resolution states.

“The national political climate continues to become increasingly hostile toward immigrants and refugees,” the report states, “and the former President’s recent return to the White House poses increased risks for immigrant communities across the country.”

Council Vice President Judy Pineda Neufeld, the daughter of two immigrant parents, said she told her nieces and nephews in 2016 that they would not be deported and that they were safe because they were born in the United States.

“The rhetoric coming out of the 2016 campaign was just as hateful and hostile as we see today,” Pineda Neufeld said. “It really struck me that young people were going to bed afraid of what would happen to them and their families.”

Here is Somerville’s speech regarding the definition of shelter: Governor Maura Healey’s promise HE Massachusetts State Police will not be used to help Trump mass deportation efforts. The state’s highest security agency also announced such support is contrary to its mission.

The resolution states that under the sanctuary definition, Somerville “will strongly advocate for the recognition of schools, hospitals, places of worship, and courthouses as ‘sensitive places,’ free from federal immigration enforcement actions to ensure the fair and compassionate administration of justice.” ”

The resolution “also calls on neighboring cities in Massachusetts to reaffirm their commitment to serving and protecting immigrant communities and to join in solidarity to protect the rights and safety of residents.”

Councilwoman Naima Sait, an Algerian immigrant, said she felt “overwhelmed” after the election results and would have to deal with an administration that has “historically shaken our society.”

Sait said that when he was teaching at Somerville High School in 2016, he worked mostly with first-generation immigrant families and some parents had to leave the country.

“I saw fear in my students’ eyes every day,” he said. “I saw them fall behind in their school work because they began to take on larger roles in their families by becoming the primary provider and the person seeking legal services.”

First Publication Date: November 15, 2024, 18:56 EST