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⛅Getting cloudier and slightly cooler, with highs in the 30s. Sunset is at 6:54 p.m.
As lawmakers debate a bill that would ban ICE officers from detaining people in courthouses across the state, we have the first look at how many people federal immigration officers detained at Massachusetts courthouses last year: at least 614, GBH reporter Sarah Betancourt found.
Officially, people who work for the court system are not allowed to initiate communication with ICE agents, though they have to provide publicly available information if asked. But that’s not what happens in practice, said Nicholas Louisa, a defense attorney in Middlesex County.
“My experience has been that the policy is basically meaningless,” Louisa told Betancourt. “I think essentially what happens is that court officers develop relationships with certain ICE officers. The policy may prohibit a court officer from proactively contacting an ICE officer, but really, all that needs to happen is the ICE officer needs to just send a text to the court officer — you know, 'Is this defendant in court today?’ And that initiates ... the conversation, and the court officers [are] free to respond.” You can find the full investigation here.
Four Things to Know
1. About 30 TSA workers at Logan Airport left their jobs recently, quitting in part because they haven’t been getting paid. Congress has not funded their parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, which also oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
A spokesperson for Massport, the agency that runs Logan, said there haven’t been significant delays and that airport security is still adequately staffed. But Mike Gayzagian, president of the New England branch of the TSA workers’ union, said more workers could leave if they don’t start getting paychecks again. “You’re not just going to see this one-time mass of people leave,” he said. “It’s going to be a trickle effect. As people run out of money, they’re going to have to find something else to do.”
2. Ballot question watch: the state’s public defenders want the right to unionize. The Legislature now has a chance to pass a law saying they can form a union — and if lawmakers don’t act on the issue, this might be one of the questions you see on your ballot in November.
“There is no voice in our upper management that is responsive to our constant reminders that our clients are suffering, that our staff is overwhelmed and that many of us are facing abuse in the courtroom,” said Tanvi Verma, a public defender with the Committee for Public Counsel Services. “With that being true, our only support is ourselves.”
3. Another potential ballot question, this one about whether Massachusetts should cap annual rent increases at 5%, is also in front of the Legislature. State Sen. Cindy Friedman on Tuesday was among the lawmakers who heard arguments in favor of the measure from housing justice groups (who say rent is unaffordable and the market needs some regulation) and against it from real estate interests (who say rent stabilization would cut into their profits and discourage new housing development.)
Friedman encouraged the two groups to come together and perhaps find some common ground without putting the measure on November’s ballot. “If you guys can just please start talking to each other and appreciate where you’re coming from, it would be enormously helpful for us — for you and actually for the whole commonwealth,” Friedman said.
4. Today marks 36 years since two men walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and stole 13 works of art, which to this day haven’t been found.
“I will stay that we know everything we need to know except the current whereabouts of the art,” museum Director of Security Anthony Amore said. “But of course that’s like in football, that’s the red zone and you can get all the way down the field but you got to get in the end zone right? Until we have the paintings back, nothing’s solved.” Here’s how GBH covered the heist back in 1990.
Catching the Codfather: Inside the pilot house
By Ian Coss, host of The Big Dig and Catching the Codfather
Our final episode of “Catching The Codfather” features the story of Paulo Valente, who is part of a long lineage of fishermen that extends both before him and beyond him. During our interview, he kept getting pulled away by phone calls — he was about to leave on the first trip of his season and was trying to confirm how much quota he had to work with. As Paulo sighed with frustration on the phone, I explored the pilot house of the boat.
This boat, The Fisherman, is many decades old — it dates back to the boom times of the New Bedford fleet — and every corner of it looks well-worn, including these hydraulic controls. I love the mixture of Portuguese and English here — “arriar” means “to lower.”
Valente keeps a well-worn Bible directly in front of the helm. To the right-hand side is a bunch of fish-finding gear and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. To the left is a binder with colorful tabs detailing the various government procedures the boat must follow. Scattered in between is this collection of religious icons: a saint holding a sailboat, an image of Jesus on the cross and an artifact from a small town in Portugal where the Virgin Mary once appeared to a group of children.
I was struck by these displays of faith everywhere, but it shouldn’t be surprising. To go out to sea, to risk unpredictable weather, to drop a net in the water and hope what comes up will feed your family — these are nothing if not profound acts of faith.
I hope you enjoy this final episode of the series, and I hope that, like me, you can never look at a fish fillet again without thinking about everything that had to happen to bring it to your plate.
I will be back in your inbox again before long, so take care until then, and if you have a few seconds to spare, leave us a review in your podcast app.
Listen to the full series: Catching the Codfather
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