Demonstrators from community and faith-based groups returned to the Massachusetts State House less than a week after lawmakers passed a budgetthat did not include immigration enforcement measures they'd pushed for that pledged to keep up the fight and hold politicians accountable.
"We are here to let them know that we are not going to stop," Isabel Lopez of the Massachusetts Community Action Network said as dozens stood behind her on the Grand Staircase, holding signs and battery-powered tea lights. "We are here to deliver a message to them that we are mourning but we also are taking action."
After singing, praying and chanting at the staircase, the group delivered to lawmakers letters -- signed by "Immigrants and immigrant families in Massachusetts" and each with a black mourning ribbon affixed to it -- expressing "heartbreak, our tremendous disappointment in our elected officials and outrage at the failure of Speaker Robert DeLeo and conference committee members [Rep.] Jeffrey Sanchez and [Sen.] Karen Spilka to protect immigrant families."
The Senate-backed budget rider would have prohibited local law enforcement from entering collaboration agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as 287(g) agreements, and generally prevented police from inquiring into people's immigration status. It was a pared back version of standalone legislation known as the Safe Communities Act.
"While entire immigrant communities in the State of Massachusetts are more vulnerable than ever due to vicious attacks by Donald Trump and white supremacist Stephen Miller, our entire Massachusetts legislature decide to do nothing to actually protect immigrant families and the vulnerable," the demonstrators' letter said.
The Trump administration has made cracking down on undocumented immigrants a priority, but critics say the policy emphasis is created fear among families.
Both Sanchez, the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, and DeLeo have said there was not consensus around the issue in the House.
In a statement Thursday, DeLeo said he expected the House would "spend the next few months evaluating what can be done on a state level."
"It's important to be clear: there's nothing in state law that precludes municipalities from adopting their own policies regarding their interactions with ICE," DeLeo said, referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Where consensus eluded us was to force municipalities into a statewide policy. Different communities have different approaches."
Rep. Mike Connolly, a Cambridge Democrat who voted against the budget because it did not include the immigration language, told the State House News Service that supporters of those measures need to "stick with it and continue engaging everyone."
"I think that there is opportunity to find consensus," he said. "We're talking about four basic immigrant protections, and when you break it down and you speak to other members -- I've even spoken with Republican members -- and you say, 'Do you think someone, an undocumented person, should be aware of their due process rights?' what I hear is people say, 'Of course.' "
Some demonstrators held signs specifically calling out DeLeo, bearing slogans including "Stop DeLeoing human rights" and "DeLeo desist! Families resist!"
Asked about the focus on DeLeo, Connolly said he thought it made sense because people "direct their opinions" toward leadership positions.
"But it's up to all of us as members to do everything we can, so I think people should talk to their own members, they should talk to the speaker, they should talk to everyone and really try to reach that understanding," he said.
Democrat Reps. Jay Kaufman of Lexington and Denise Provost of Somerville also watched the demonstration, as did lieutenant governor candidate Jimmy Tingle, who said he decided to stop by after hearing about the event on the news.
Tingle, a Cambridge Democrat, said afterwards that he would push for the Safe Communities Act if elected.
"I just think we need to strike the right balance of how to do it and satisfy both the needs of the undocumented people that are here and also their families so they're safe, but also balance out the needs of the legislators and their concerns and the elected officials' concerns and their constituents' concerns as well," he told the State House News Service.
Connolly, Provost and the Safe Communities Act sponsors, Rep. Juana Matias and Sen. Jamie Eldridge, voted against the budget because the immigration language was dropped. Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, who missed the vote because of a death in the family, filed a letter with the Senate clerk Tuesday saying she would have voted no.
"It is indefensible that the House blocked the Safe Communities Act language that was included in the Senate's budget," Chang-Diaz, the assistant vice chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement to the News Service. "These provisions would have protected police-community relationships that are crucial to public safety, preserved our taxpayer dollars for actual public safety threats, and recognized immigrants as the true assets they are to our communities."
Bishop Alan Gates of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, one of a handful of clergy members to speak, said the Episcopal Church supports a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants.
"It does not befit a commonwealth to extend legal due process to some categories of residents and not to others," Gates said. "It does not befit a commonwealth to create communities in which some residents turn confidently and gratefully to their public safety officers when needed, while other residents are afraid to do so."
Also on Tuesday, both the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice and Centro Presente, an immigrant advocacy group, cheered a U.S. District Court opinion that was issued on Monday. The opinion rejected the federal government's request to dismiss the caseCentro Presente v. Trump, which challenges the termination of temporary protected status for nationals of Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras.
The decision "gives hope to immigrant families and children," Centro Presente executive director Patricia Montes said in a statement.
In an email newsletter on Monday explaining her vote against the budget, Provost said, "The deportation clock is running already for over 12,000 Massachusetts residents whose Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is under revocation."
"I had truly thought that the delay in producing a budget meant that the conference committee budget would emerge with some kind of basic due process assurances, at least. I was stunned, and beyond disappointed that there was nothing," she wrote.
This report was originally published by State House News Service.
