News Notes The Boston Police were collaborating with the people running internment camps
By Maya Shaffer
After nearly a year and a half the proof came out and I was right; the Boston Police were able to quietly aid ICE in putting humans in internment camps thanks to the worthless and unenforced Massachusetts public records law. I came in third place for an Association of Alternative Newsmedia award by writing about how the ongoing public records crisis in Massachusetts was likely enabling the BPD to aid in ICE’s efforts to put humans in internment camps.
On Oct 25 2019 WBUR ran an important story about the communications between the BPD and ICE. The story created outrage and a stir because the BPD had an ICE 'Task Force Officer", Sergeant Detective Gregory Gallagher, whose work with ICE included violating the city’s sanctuary law. The revelation caused the BPD to immediately remove Gallagher from his post as the task force operator and reassign him.
But on June 26 of last year I made a request for the correspondence between the BPD and ICE. The BPD unlawfully dragged their feet responding and eventually claimed they needed more information from me, but refused to tell me what information they were looking for. I won an order from the state demanding they respond properly, but I was never sent any records.
On July 2 of last year I published:
“It’s widely known that the Trump administration is holding immigrants indefinitely in camps on military bases, while the president has called for the deportation of detainees without due process.
What’s less known is that here in Massachusetts, our feeble public records law is helping to bolster these efforts by obscuring the process through which local officials share information with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
I even broke down how the BPD and Walsh administration had a history of working with ICE despite the law and Walsh’s public comments:
“This history of this administration working with the feds runs counter to the mayor’s public comments and the city’s sanctuary status. The only way to comprehend the breadth of the cooperation is to see the actual records and communications between BPS, BPD/BRIC, and ICE. In Massachusetts, though, it could take months to get those records—if anyone ever gets them at all.”
WBUR ultimately noted exactly what I said, “More than 800 pages of documents obtained by WBUR draw into question just how aligned the Boston Police Department's practices are with the public message coming from Mayor Marty Walsh's office — namely, that city police limit cooperation with ICE to only cases involving violent crimes and suspected felons.”
In my initial reporting I had guessed it would take months… but, as usual, my gloomy view of our state’s records law was too optimistic. I wonder how many lives have been harmed by the BPD’s collaboration with ICE over the year and a half since I made the request that should have broken this story.
It was exciting to win third place in AAN’s Free Speech & Open Government category, the first award I’ve won, but it’s hard to celebrate being right that our local police are actively dodging transparency laws and sanctuary laws to assist the people who run internment camps. I do want to thank Chris Faraone and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism as well as all of the folks who publish DigBoston.
