You are cordially invited to your lynching, Mayor Wu

 

By Spy City Hall Bureau Chief Jimmy Burke with Immigration Correspondent Emma Goldman

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, juggling a full time job, a new baby, and a re-election campaign, is now forced to put aside all three because the Republican stooges in Congress have issued an invitation she can’t refuse: to attend her own lynching in Washington DC on Wednesday, March 5.

The supposed point of the invitation is to hear from her on how the Boston Police handles undocumented immigrants as part of its crime-fighting strategy. And if you believe that, you’ll believe that the Republican regime in Washington is a legitimate competent government.

The invitation, backed by the threat of a subpoena, was issued by Republican plug-ugly and bully James Comer, who spent the last two years investigating the “Biden crime family” and coming up with bupkis. He and his fellow screaming bigots are eager to yell at the Mayor about Boston’s reputation as a crime-ravaged “sanctuary city” in front of television cameras.

The term “sanctuary city” has no particular meaning, although it is generally thought to encompass jurisdictions in which the police are instructed to fight crime and leave civil immigration enforcement, like civil tax enforcement, or civil labor-law enforcement, or civilian environmental-protection enforcement, or any other f***in’ kind of civil enforcement of federal law to the responsible federal agency.

The term “crime-ravaged” does have a particular meaning. In the case of Boston, it means that

“We saved you a tree, I mean a seat, lady!”

Boston is on track to end 2024 with the fewest number of homicides in nearly seven decades, mirroring a national trend of decreased violent crime and bolstering its status as one of the safest large cities in the United States.... “In the entire time that I’ve been a police officer, going back since when I came on, the city has never been safer, period, when it comes to crime, particularly violent crime,” Police Commissioner Michael Cox said at a news conference. There were 24 homicides in Boston through Dec. 22, according to Boston Police data — a 33 percent decline from 2023 and the fewest in 67 years. Boston is an outlier among similarly sized US cities: In 2023, there were 150 homicides in Louisville, Ky.; 132 murders in Las Vegas; 73 homicides in Portland, Ore.; 85 in Denver; and 38 in El Paso, Texas.

So whatever Mayor Wu is doing about crime, it seems to be working admirably. By the way, with a murder rate six times that of Boston, Las Vegas could really use the exciting new residency of FBI Supremo Kash Patel.

That’s the reality. In the paranoid fantasy world of white bigots who have found employment with the Tangerine-Faced Fascist, Boston is a hellscape of violent crime, caused by the Boston Police’s failure to round up undocumented immigrants and turn them over to the federal body snatchers:

On Wednesday, Republican members of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released what was effectively an ominous teaser trailer for the March 5 hearing, in which lawmakers claim Wu, along with the mayors of Chicago, Denver, and New York City, will be “held publicly accountable” for their cities' policies. The video served as a preview for the grilling Wu and the other three mayors are expected to endure by conservative lawmakers, who will likely argue the cities are less safe because of their laws that ban local police from complying with requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to detain people based solely on their immigration status.

Yeah, no.

A few reality checks are in order:

First, what the Republican immigrant-persecutors are bitching about is something not actually under the control of the Mayor. The Boston Police cannot just lock up immigrants because the federal body-snatchers want them to. Amazingly, in a free society the authority of the police is bounded by law. In the Commonwealth, the law is that:

Why don't Republicans like Mayor Wu?
(Photo: Wu Campaign)

...as defined in a 2017 decision by the Supreme Judicial Court, which held that “Massachusetts provides no authority for Massachusetts court officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a federal civil immigration detainer.” The practical impact of that SJC decision is that Massachusetts law enforcement can’t hold people just because ICE asks them to. (The reference to “court officers” has been interpreted to mean all law enforcement agencies.) If there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, and a warrant is issued, Boston Police partner with state and federal law enforcement agencies — including ICE. But if there’s no criminal warrant, an individual cannot be kept in BPD custody.

You could look it up.

So in fact Mayor Wu can’t instruct the police to hold suspected undocumented immigrants in the absence of a reason based in state criminal law. You’d have to be an idiot to claim otherwise. That doesn’t stop loud useless white men, though:

[Wu]r drew Homan’s fire after she said...that local authorities will not assist federal mass deportation efforts,... “Either she helps us, or she gets the hell out of the way, because we’re going to do it,” Homan shot back Monday in an interview on the conservative news outlet Newsmax. “She’s not very smart, I’ll give her that,” Homan said of the Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate.

Hey f***nuts, this is Boston and the Globe isn’t going to let you get away with attacking the brainpower of someone with two Harvard degrees. (That doesn’t mean she’s right; it just means attacking her as dumb says more about the speaker than the Mayor).

Never mind the law. The decision to instruct the Boston Police not to interrogate people about their immigration status is rooted in, wait for it, public safety:

Under Boston’s existing laws, Wu has said, law enforcement will not be required or expected to participate in mass deportations of residents who have not been involved in “serious criminal activity.” Advocates for such policies argue they are important tools for community safety: if undocumented immigrants fear deportation every time they interact with local authorities, they may be less likely to report crimes, supporters say.

Ya think? If the undocumented believe that the Boston Police will turn them over to ICE, that essentially puts them outside the law. If a victim of crime thinks they’ll be detained based on their immigration status, how can they be expected to report crimes like domestic violence? And how can they be expected to otherwise assist the police in any other criminal matter? 

So Mayor Wu is doing nothing more than following Massachusetts law, as she is required to do. 

Why then is she going to be strung up by Republican white men next week in Washington?

Three terrible reasons.

1.  The Republican white supremacist and woman-hating base enjoys nothing more than the spectacle of beating up on a woman of color.  That she is much much smarter than they are is only a bonus.

2.  Spineless Republican weirdos and toadies like to perform their sadism and cruelty to amuse and delight their cruel and sadistic overlord, King Tiny Toadstool.   

3.  Cheap loudmouths like the Tangerine-Faced Fascist and his knee-breakers like Tom Homan have been running their mouths about how they are going to scoop up millions of undocumented immigrants and bulldoze them into the sea, like a reboot of Soylent Green.

To the body snatchers, it's kryptonite

But so far the numbers demonstrate that they have conspicuously failed to achieve their evil goal.  They lack enough jackboots and whips to get the job done.  Even worse, many immigrants are now aware of their legal rights, including the right to tell ICE body-snatcher to sod off in the absence of a civil warrant (which they also know does not permit the goons to break down your door).

The body-snatchers need an excuse to explain away their lack of success.  The easiest excuse is that they're being frustrated by the likes of Michelle Wu, even though she (a) a girl, (b) not white, and (c) according to Homan, not very smart.

If your mighty deportation machine can be stopped by a little dumb girl who doesn't look like a 'Bama sorority rush captain, maybe you're not as big and strong as you claim to be.

But by tormenting her before a national audience, you can pretend to be big and powerful and strong and white.

Comer and his Republican lynch mob are simply following in the footsteps of their Fascist ego ideal, Mussolini. Old Benito, until he was strung up in a Milan gas station, always strutted around as if he were actually big and strong.  Until he was confronted by people who weren't impressed and weren't going to be bullied.

Like Mayor Wu.