The arrest of nine workers by federal immigration agents at an Allston car wash on Nov. 4 — resulting in their detention over the last two weeks, despite claims from their attorneys that they have legitimate permission to work here — is a grave injustice. The fact that it may have been the result of efforts by a radical Republican college student to sic ICE agents on people he deemed to be “criminals” — based solely on their appearance— should disgust all Americans.
Despite assurances that only violent criminals or “the worst of the worst” would be targets of enforcement, the Allston roundup lays bear the truly depraved nature of this president and his red-capped minions, including this self-deputizing kid from Boston University who targeted a neighborhood business because its workers were “criminals”—in his words— who had “no right to be here.”
There has been no evidence presented that any of the people grabbed and hauled away from that car wash were wanted for any crime— or had any record of wrong-doing. And yet, as many as 17 vehicles carrying agents— some armored, according to The Globe and other press reports— swarmed the scene. Liz Breadon, the Irish-born woman who represents Allston-Brighton on the Boston City Council, called it a “kidnapping— plain and simple.”
In a statement condemning the raid, Breadon noted that “those detained were not permitted by ICE to retrieve their documents” and called it “a horrifying chapter in the illegal and vindictive targeting of Boston by ICE and the Trump Administration.”
The Gestapo-like tactics ICE agents are using are even making some Republicans queasy. Mike Kennealy, who is running for the GOP nomination to challenge Maura Healey in next year’s election, told the Globe’s Joan Vennochi that “it appears a report was made to ICE based on ethnicity and appearance, not because of any information that these people were here in the United States illegally.”
“I do not support racial profiling,” Kennealy told her.
Let’s hope other people on the right pick up on Kennealy’s message.
Like all parts of the US, this city has a long and disturbing history of people being targeted by racist citizens and law enforcement because they don’t fit into the white power structure’s prism of what a law-abiding American citizen looks like or sounds like. We’ve come a long way here in Boston, but now we’re faced with a White House that has marshaled its considerable resources and armaments to raid businesses, yank people into detention centers, and disrupt families— all with the goal of terrorizing hard-working people and compelling the rest of us to cower and yield
It’s not going to happen.
In the 1850s, as Black men and women sought freedom and refuge in Boston, this city resisted the southern bounty hunters who scoured New England states and cities looking to round up humans under the auspices of the Fugitive Slave Act. Bostonians resisted and defied the unjust law and the agents trying to enforce it.
A poster from 1851 warned the people of Boston: “Keep a sharp look out for Kidnappers and have TOP EYE open.”
Today, thanks to the Trump-fueled racism of people like this vigilante student and his fellow radicals, we must extend the alert to include bigots who see a Black or Brown person and think, reflexively, “I’ll just call in ICE and ask questions later.”
It’s a shameful impulse. Let’s meet it with the scorn and derision it deserves.
Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, next week’s edition of The Reporter will be printed a day early. The deadline for content is Friday, Nov. 21 at 4p.m.
