LAST WEEK, Massachusetts found itself at the center of the controversy over President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants once he takes office.
On Wednesday, Trump’s newest attack dog – and campaign finance benefactor – Elon Musk, armed with his own social media platform to stir the pot, ripped “sanctuary” cities in Massachusetts that he said were “protecting child rapists” after federal immigration authorities arrested three foreign nationals in the state. “Any politician who does so should be recalled immediately,” he said of those who oppose the use of local police to aid immigration enforcement.
That came two days after the man Trump named to serve as his “border czar” took aim at Boston Mayor Michelle Wu over her pledge not to cooperate with any mass deportation efforts the incoming administration mounts, which the mayor said would only harm public safety.
Trump’s promise to deport one million undocumented residents per year will compromise public safety and create a crisis of legitimacy for many municipal police departments in the Commonwealth and across the US. And it’s not just progressive politicians like Wu and Gov. Maura Healey who are saying that; law enforcement officials across the state have said so as well.
Police departments will be asked to compromise their commitments to community safety by joining a Trump crusade to capture and deport people accused of violating federal civil immigration rules. (The conduct becomes criminal only if a person has been deported previously and has re-entered the US.)
Salem Police Chief Lucas Miller said 10 days ago that his department will not help federal agents and US soldiers apprehend people whose sole offense is unlawful immigration. “The Salem Police Department does not and is not authorized to enforce federal immigration law,” Miller said in a statement. “We recognize that there is concern, particularly in our immigrant community, about what the future might bring. We will continue to adhere to our mandate to protect the safety of all Salem residents and visitors, regardless of their immigration status.”
Gov. Healey has said that Massachusetts State Police will not provide assistance, and Mayor Wu has declared that her city also will not be assisting the federal government in apprehending immigrants whose only offense is living in the US without permission.
“Elections have consequences, and the federal government is responsible for a certain set of actions, and cities, no individual city, can reverse or override some parts of that,” Wu said last Sunday on WCVB-TV’s “On the Record.” “But what we can do is make sure that we are doing our part to protect our residents in every possible way, that we are not cooperating with those efforts that actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear and having large-scale economic impact.”
Tom Homan, Trump’s recently named border czar, responded to Wu’s well-reasoned position with the kind of juvenile cheap shot for which the incoming president and his acolytes are well-known, especially when discussing women and immigrants. Homan opined that the alumna of Harvard College and Harvard Law School is “not very bright.”
Voters who support the removal of millions of migrants may not have considered fully what such an unprecedented operation will look like and feel like in America’s neighborhoods.
Homan has acknowledged the necessity for an army of at least 100,000 armed personnel; the establishment of detention camps; a massive, coordinated transportation infrastructure and a large, efficient bureaucracy to administer the program and keep the vans, buses, trains, and planes moving.
Even if the Trump White House deployed every federal law enforcement officer and support staff member to the removal operation, they would have too few personnel to make even a dent in their goal. The White House will need to draw tens of thousands of personnel from other sources. Homan has said they will be drawn from the US military, including activated National Guard soldiers, and municipal, state, and county authorities.
He also has claimed of late that the effort will tag those undocumented people accused of additional crimes. However, undocumented people do not commit many state-level felonies and thus will not help the new president deport as many as one million undocumented persons per year, a goal stated by Vice President-elect JD Vance.
Precedent certainly exists for local, state, and county law enforcement personnel to assist federal enforcement operations. Joint task forces have been a favored tactic for decades, on operations such as drug enforcement and homeland security. But these have been responses to genuine threats to safety and security.
The vast majority of undocumented people pose no threat to public safety, all the Trump lies to the contrary. According to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, “Crime rates among undocumented immigrants are just a fraction of those of their US-born neighbors.” Victims and victimizers in the US usually resemble one another, in terms of skin color and citizenship status. The incoming president should be well aware, for example, that women are most often raped by men they know, rather than by strangers of any description. Moreover, despite Trump’s crowd-pleasing mendacities, violent crime overall is down in the US.
The Trump administration could simply push local law enforcement to ramp up the existing partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This program, known as 287(g) or Secure Communities, has existed since the 1990s, and the president-elect regularly praises it.
According to the Wisconsin researchers, at least two independent studies suggest that Secure Communities efforts did not have any effect on crime rates, despite deporting more than 200,000 people in its first four years. The simple conclusion such research points to: One does not reduce and prevent crime by focusing on those who don’t commit many crimes.
So, law enforcement agencies will be summoned to devote resources to people who pose no threat to public safety, whose only crime is living in the US without permission. The choice to join up or to refuse will be both strategic and moral.
Participation in the deportation detachment would undermine the purpose of local policing in Massachusetts, as Salem’s Chief Miller has pointed out. Each agency executive must ask himself or herself what role they wish to play in the community.
Do they want to be part of what will be by definition an invasion force, or do they wish to act as stewards of public safety? If the incoming president is going to deport even hundreds of thousands of people, that is the choice local authorities will have to make.
According to the American Immigration Council, “more than 100,000 US citizens in Massachusetts live with at least one family member who is undocumented.” The Center for Immigration Studies reports that 355,000 undocumented immigrants make up over 5 percent of the total population of the Commonwealth.
Nearly 20 percent of the Commonwealth’s population is foreign-born. Gateway Cities and other communities with large populations of Latino residents, most of whom are US citizens, are still very likely to feel besieged. Under pressure from above to meet the Trump quota, mistakes by the enforcement units are all but guaranteed. This will add to the chaos and missteps that occur commonly in any new, large-scale police operation.
Lives will be at stake if the deportation leviathan rolls through American communities as envisioned. Armed personnel untrained in domestic police procedures will be entering homes during early morning raids. Frightened people will be reluctant to call 911. Crimes against undocumented people will go unreported. Women victimized by domestic violence will be more reluctant to seek help from the police. More broadly, and based on historical patterns, people will be less likely to seek help from social and human services, including emergency rooms when injured or sick.
Miller, the Salem police chief whose job is to put public safety in his community first, said it best in his statement responding to the growing concern about a coming mass deportation effort.
“We will continue to adhere to our belief,” he said, “that local law enforcement must be able to interact with victims, witnesses, and even suspects without their fearing that cooperation with the police will jeopardize their presence here in the United States.”
Jim Jordan is the retired director of strategic planning at the Boston Police Department. He has taught police strategy at Northeastern University, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and in training settings around the country.
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