ICE officials arrested 50 immigrants in Massachusetts during a raid last week that was a part of the “Safe City” operation focusing on sanctuary cities and states in the U.S.
“The blatant targeting of cities and states that don’t collaborate in the Trump deportation machine is really egregious,” said Carol Rose, the executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU, on BPR today. “It’s just really cruel and inhumane, and, frankly, unacceptable.”
Rose explained how the state could try to resist federal raids like the one that happened last week, saying that resistance needs to come from local law enforcement.
“We can’t always stop the ICE deportation machine because we don’t have the ability at the state level to stop ICE, necessarily,” she said. “We do have the ability to say that our state and local law enforcement officers won’t collaborate with ICE. We won’t hold people for ICE, we won’t be a part of the Trump deportation machine, and I think it’s really important that we pursue that.”
Rose noted that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled last month that there is no legal basis for state law enforcement to hold someone for ICE.
She said another way to manage federal immigration actions that don’t align with the state’s is through the court system and through the legislature.
“It’s going to the state legislature to pass laws like the Safe Communities Act or similar laws that would basically say, we won’t violate the [federal] law, but we’ll go right up to the edge, and say that we in Massachusetts aren’t going to target people who haven’t committed a crime,” she said. “Overstaying your visa is not, in fact, a crime, so a third of the people they’d picked up had committed no crime.”
Carol Rose is the Executive Director of the ACLU. To hear her interview in its entirety, click on the audio player above
