BOSTON MAYOR MICHELLE WU climbed Capitol Hill on Wednesday to face Republican lawmakers eager to make an example of blue state mayors and their immigration policies. Over the course of six and a half hours, the first-term mayor and daughter of immigrants dug in her heels and lauded her city as a welcoming place for migrants regardless of their legal status.
“We are the safest major city in the country, because our gun laws are the strongest in the nation, because our officers have built relationships over decades, and because all of our residents trust that when they call 911 in the event of an emergency or to report a crime, help will come,” Wu told members of the House Oversight Committee, seated alongside mayors from Denver, Chicago, and New York City. “This federal administration’s approach is undermining that trust.”
The mayoral panel was there to defend so-called “sanctuary city” polices, like the 2014 Boston Trust Act limiting local police cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on civil immigration detainers. If immigration authorities have criminal warrants, local authorities will cooperate, the mayors noted, but they will not hold someone simply at a detainer request from ICE.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) said she would refer them to the US Department of Justice for investigation into their immigration policies, while US Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) accused the mayors of playing a “deft linguistic shell game” to conflate legal and illegal immigration. “No one is asking you to go round up criminal aliens,” he said. “We’re asking you to take people who are already in your custody and hand them over the legal federal law enforcement.”
In one testy exchange, US Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), told Wu to leave her doors unlocked because he would be “showing up” at her house, bag in hand and asking for a car and money, and demanding a “warm meal and a balanced diet.”
“You obviously wouldn’t like this, because you don’t know me, right?” Gosar said, comparing that behavior to allowing immigrants to use city resources regardless of immigration status. “You’ve made the United States complicit and one of the largest purveyors of human trafficking in the world,” he added.
Wu forcefully objected that the “false narrative is that immigrants in general are criminals, or that immigrants in general cause all sorts of danger and harm. That is actually what is undermining safety in our communities. If you wanted to make us safe, pass gun reforms. Stop cutting Medicaid. Stop cutting cancer research. Stop cutting funds for veterans,” she said, a clip of which quickly spread on social media. “That is what will make our city safe.”
Roughly 28 percent of Boston’s population is foreign-born, according to city statistics. Just under 30 percent of the city’s immigrants are Hispanic/Latino, another 25.5 percent are Black or African American, and 24.6 percent are Asian or Pacific Islander. Residents hail from China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Vietnam, El Salvador and Colombia.
The panel of mayors emphasized that their ICE detainer policies issues clearly align with their local priorities including lowering crime, deploying law enforcement funding and resources efficiently, and ensuring that the cities are welcoming to all residents.
“Forty years of Chicago’s leaders have recognized that our policies toward civil immigration matters help to prevent and solve crimes,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “Put simply, any actions that amplify fears of deportations make Chicago more dangerous.”
Fear of deportation can discourage witnesses from cooperating with police, he said as an example. Wu and several Democratic congresspeople noted that people are reportedly keeping children home from school and opting out of attending religious services for fear of immigration enforcement action.
David Bier, director of immigration studies with the libertarian Cato Institute, said at the hearing that the Trump administration’s approach to immigration reform has been “lawless” and “chaotic.” The consequences stretch beyond those without legal residence, he said, having documented over 155 US citizens targeted by detainer requests.
Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, commit crimes serious enough for incarceration at half the rate of US-born Americans, Bier said, and there is a correlation between more immigration and lower homicide rates that holds true across the US.
“An indiscriminate mass deportation agenda is a far greater threat to our safety than any city policy,” Bier said. Gesturing with an armful of papers, he said “a mountain of imperial research show that reasonable restrictions on ICE cooperation do not increase crime rates, and that immigrants lower crime rates.”
Wu entered the D.C. arena arguably in a stronger position than her fellow mayors. Recent polling shows some 80 percent of voters in Chicago, where Wu grew up, have an unfavorable view of Johnson and just over half of New York City voters have an unfavorable view of Mayor Eric Adams, who is facing corruption charges that the Trump administration has ordered dropped, citing his pledge to cooperate with federal immigration goals, with the option to bring them again at any time.
By contrast, a February poll from Emerson College found that 57 percent of Boston voters have a favorable view of Wu and just over half of voters approve of the Boston Trust Act, which bars Boston police from turning people over to federal authorities solely for immigration violations.
Wu’s mayoral opponent, Josh Kraft, indicated there is little daylight between the two of them on the issue. Asked by reporters what he would say if he appeared in front of the Oversight Committee, he said he’d be “telling them all about the great things in Boston, why I’m here. Thirty-five years I’ve worked in these communities, I’ve met all kinds of people, many of them immigrants, making our city stronger and prouder for everyone.”
While other mayors took different hits over millions or billions of dollars being spent on care for undocumented residents, Wu noted that Boston does not ask about immigration status when providing city services and many community organizations also serve all Boston residents.
The stance is costing taxpayer dollars, Cloud argued. Some $80 million of FEMA funding went to New York City to house migrants, $38 million in Denver, $32 million in Chicago, and $29 million in Boston, according to Cloud.
As US Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) said the mayor “does not care how much of your resources she has spent on people who are not citizens, Wu snapped back.
“The City of Boston is sick of having people outside Boston telling us what we need,” she said.
And even fellow politicians in Boston who have disagreed with Wu in the past, or are actively trying to displace her as mayor, chose to support her as she faced the Republican-controlled committee.
Immigration advocacy groups and local officials led a rally outside Boston City Hall, attended by several hundred people, and a small crowd of Trump supporters who waved “Make America Great Again” banners.
The City Hall rally featured Councilor Julia Mejia, who has clashed with Wu on policies like returning to an elected school committee – Wu backs keeping mayoral control of the body – but urged the crowd to support the mayor. “No matter how they spin it,” Boston remains a safe US city, Mejia said.
“We all know what’s happening in DC is a Republican circus that has nothing to do with substance, nothing to do with anything that’s important to any of us,” said Kraft, who has voted in Democratic and Republican primaries, and registered as a Democrat when he moved to Boston from Brookline at the end of 2023. “It’s just performance.”
Suzanne Lee, a longtime activist on immigration and housing issues, also attended the rally, noting that she is a first-generation immigrant whose family came to America in the 1890s.
“This whole attack on immigrants, we know it’s a diversion from the real problem the country is facing that needs all of our brainpower to figure out and meet that challenge, and not waste time and deal with nonsense,” she said. “The housing shortage is manmade, it’s created by policy so let’s focus on that. It’s no longer just the poor, it’s the working folks, the middle class cannot afford to have a place for their family. Focus on that.”