Every week, GBH News political reporter Adam Reilly runs down the big ways that the Trump administration and its decisions are intersecting with the politics and people of Massachusetts.
Reilly joined GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz to share his analysis of the latest developments. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Mark Herz: This is GBH’s Morning Edition. Every week around this time, we look back at some of the big political developments locally, and they often involve the Trump administration in some way, shape, or form. And this is definitely one such week. I’m joined by GBH political reporter Adam Reilly, as always, for a retrospective and explication.
Adam Reilly: Good morning, Mark. Good to see you.
Herz: So on Tuesday, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu offered a pointed response to Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Trump administration. Bondi had sent a letter to Boston and several other jurisdictions, accusing them of being sanctuary jurisdictions that are thwarting federal immigration enforcement efforts. And the letters warned that funds could be withheld and prosecutions might actually occur if the officials in charge of these jurisdictions didn’t reverse course. And Wu, and not for the first time, came out swinging, right?
Reilly: Yeah, Wu essentially got back in touch with Pam Bondi and told her she had no idea what she was talking about. She responded in a letter and also with this press conference that she held on Tuesday. And in both cases, she was completely defiant, essentially telling Bondi that she’s totally off the mark in her description of how Boston operates in these areas. Let’s take a listen to just a little bit of her press conference on Tuesday.
Mayor Michelle Wu (prerecorded): To all the federal officials attacking communities that embody diversity, creativity, and moral clarity — we mayors said this in D.C. nearly 6 months ago, and I’ll say it again today: You are wrong on the law and you are wrong on safety. Most of all, you are wrong on cities. The cities that live in your minds are totally foreign to the residents living in our cities.
Reilly: Wu also said at that presser that, unlike the Trump administration, Boston follows the law when it comes to immigration enforcement — which, as she tells it, essentially means working with federal authorities to detain serious criminals when appropriate, but not acting to detain people whose primary transgression is just being here illegally.
Herz: And we heard Wu reference her springtime testimony before the House Oversight Committee with other Democratic mayors. Is it fair to say that the conversation hasn’t advanced since then? That on the one hand, you’ve got the administration accusing Boston and other sanctuary jurisdictions of breaking the law, and on the other hand, you’ve got those jurisdictions insisting that they’re following the law to a T?
Reilly: I think you’re right that the basic conflict remains unresolved. What I do think has changed is the sense of threat that places like Boston are currently feeling, or should be feeling. It’s worth pointing out this current back and forth is happening after Trump basically militarized Washington D.C., sending in the D. C. National Guard to crack down on what he called a lack of safety in the city’s streets. I at least feel in my gut like this abiding disagreement over whether places like Boston are on the right or wrong side of the law is headed toward an escalation that could get pretty ugly pretty quickly.
Herz: Right, and in the wake of Wu’s presser, to your point, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, he said that his agency is going to, quote, “flood” Boston with agents due to what he describes as the mayor’s intransigence.
Reilly: That’s right, Lyons made those comments in an interview on the conservative Howie Carr show on Wednesday. And the acting field director of Boston’s ICE office, Patricia Hyde, also weighed in during a primetime interview on Fox News. Here’s a little of what she had to say.
Patricia Hyde (prerecorded): Unlike Mayor Wu, I was born and raised in Massachusetts. I grew up in Boston, and I know what a safe Boston looks like, and this isn’t it. I know what Boston looked like before sanctuary policies in the last four years under the previous administration. This is a public safety crisis. Sanctuary policies don’t make anyone safer. It’s just common sense. If you’re here illegally, you’ve already shown a predisposition to not respect the laws of the country.
Reilly: I just want to highlight the fact that in that bite we heard Patricia Hyde, the head of the Boston ICE Field Office, at the very least implying that Mayor Wu might not have Boston’s best interests at heart because she’s not originally from here. So a little bit of Boston nativism at play. Wu, of course, grew up in suburban Chicago, came to Massachusetts to attend Harvard College, stuck around and built a personal life and political career here. So you have that message being delivered in primetime on Fox News, which we know President Trump pays close attention to.
I also want to read you a post from Richard Grenell, the president’s special envoy for special missions. He tweeted the following or posted it, I guess, on “X” immediately after Wu’s presser. Quote: “The Boston mayor is lying. Boston doesn’t follow federal immigration law. Mayor Wu has created a sanctuary city where you’re allowed to pick and choose the laws you follow. It’s chaos. It’s an insurrection. Wu must be held to account for undermining our democracy.
Herz: Wow, the word insurrection sticks out there. Strong word.
Reilly: Yeah, extremely strong words coming from deep inside and high up in the Trump administration. One other point along these lines: our colleague Saraya Wintersmith asked the Justice Department for comment on Mayor Wu’s response, and according to our GBH News daily newsletter, here’s what they said: ”When asked to comment on Wu’s’ response, a spokesperson for the Justice Department pointed to Attorney General Bondi’s recent comments on Fox News threatening actions like withholding federal funding and sending in military, ‘Just like we did during the LA riots and just like we’re doing here in Washington, D.C.’“
Herz: So there’s a DOJ spokesperson explicitly suggesting that because of Mayor Wu’s stance, the Trump administration might actually send the U.S. military into Boston.
Reilly: That’s right. And again, I think that’s how things have changed since Wu made her trip to D.C. to testify to Congress this spring. The tensions seem to have increased. The talk is a lot tougher. And the precedent of militarization in D.C. shows how far the Trump administration will go to impose its version of order on municipalities that he thinks aren’t doing the job themselves.
Herz: Right. So what’s the likelihood of that happening? Is it reduced at all by the mayor’s constant references to Boston as the safest major city in the country?
Reilly: Yeah, she says that every chance she gets. I don’t think that reduces the chances of that kind of intervention, partly because the claim is debatable. Boston’s a lot safer than D.C., for example. Whether it’s the safest city depends on what metrics you’re looking at, at what particular point in time.
But I also don’t think Trump’s concern is really safety, per se. It is the willingness of individual cities and states to acquiesce to his vision of how immigration enforcement should operate. And however safe Boston is, it’s not going along with President Trump’s plans in that area. Local law enforcement is working separately from ICE as a rule, instead of working with them. And that approach is codified in local law, and the president doesn’t like that.
Herz: Right. Well, what do you think happens next?
Reilly: I am so leery of offering predictions, because this stuff is incredibly high stakes. But just to recap, we’ve got Trump administration members talking about cutting off federal funding to the city, prosecuting city officials, threatening to bring the military into Boston, using the word insurrection to describe Boston’s approach — all remarkably fraught language that points to a continued escalation of the situation. So if I have to predict, I’ll predict that the Trump administration makes good on at least one those threats. And in any scenario, that would be a really, really big deal.
Herz: It’s sobering to have this discussion.
Reilly: It is indeed. But all signs point to that happening.
