Latest news with #KatjanaBallantyne
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
2 Mass. sanctuary cities ask court to block Trump from defunding them while lawsuit proceeds
A pair of Boston-area cities asked a federal judge Tuesday to block the Trump administration from revoking their federal funding as it cracks down on 'sanctuary cities' over their immigration enforcement policies. The cities of Somerville and Chelsea sued the administration in February as they faced the loss of millions of dollars in federal aid for their police departments, schools, street repairs and public services. On Tuesday, the cities filed a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court in Boston, seeking a judge's intervention after the Department of Homeland Security on Friday placed both cities on a list of communities it said are violating federal law by providing sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. The department said the cities — along with 10 other Massachusetts cities and hundreds more across the country — must change their local policies to match the Trump administration's stance on immigration issues, or risk losing federal funding or contracts. Somerville and Chelsea asked the judge to pause any attempted withdrawal of their funding while the ongoing lawsuit plays out. Read more: Sanctuary or not, immigrant fears transcend borders in Chelsea, Revere Somerville first identified itself as a sanctuary city in 1987, followed by Chelsea in 2007. Like other proponents of sanctuary laws, they've argued that their policies are not only legal but beneficial to public safety as well. 'Victims and witnesses are less likely to report crimes if they know that local police are working in concert with federal immigration authorities. By avoiding that entanglement, sanctuary cities improve public safety and quality of life not just for immigrant residents, but for all residents and community members,' Lawyers for Civil Rights, the nonprofit legal group representing the cities, said in a statement Tuesday. Or as Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne put it: 'Our residents know that our community is safer when police focus on preventing crime rather than raiding the local sandwich shop.' In many sanctuary cities, the local laws don't prevent police from assisting with serious criminal matters, such as guns, drugs and human trafficking. Still, the Trump administration has accused the cities of providing safe harbor to dangerous offenders. 'These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,' U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement Thursday accompanying the list's publication. Somerville received roughly $19.4 million in federal funding last fiscal year to support roadway safety initiatives, homelessness prevention services, and efforts to reduce youth tobacco and alcohol consumption. Chelsea's $14.5 million in federal funding last year went toward police equipment such as bulletproof vests, programs for drug treatment and enforcement, programs supporting crime victims and witnesses, the city's largest downtown reconstruction project in decades, and the school system, the city said in legal filings. 'Chelsea is a city built by immigrants, sustained by their contributions, and strengthened by our shared values of inclusion, justice, and resilience,' Chelsea City Manager Fidel Maltez said in statement Tuesday, 'The President cannot use federal funding as a weapon to force local governments to undermine public safety and participate in his mass deportation efforts,' Oren Sellstrom, the litigation director for Lawyers for Civil Rights and one of the cities' attorneys, said in a statement. The future of Homeland Security's sanctuary cities list remains unclear. On Sunday, the list appeared to have been taken down after strong pushback from a national sheriffs organization that said some members were angered and confused to find their towns or counties included on an 'arbitrary' list. 'The list is being constantly reviewed and can be changed at any time and will be updated regularly,' a senior Homeland Security official said in response to a request for comment Monday. Why do ICE agents wear masks? How is ICE getting tipped off so fast? A post-9/11 program is one way This is what it's like on Martha's Vineyard after ICE raids ICE defends arrest of Milford High School student, though teen was 'not the target' ICE detained nearly 1,500 people in Mass. in one month Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Yahoo
‘Counted out 38 shell casings': Resident of 2 Mass. cities concerned about gunfire in unlikely place
He does not want to be identified, but a tenant at Clarendon Hill Towers said he witnessed a massive shootout around midnight Tuesday -- and he can't believe no one was hurt or killed. 'I was looking out my window and I thought it was a pack of firecrackers going off,' he said. 'But who would do fireworks in February?' The witness tells Boston 25 News that while he was too far away to identify anyone, he saw one person on foot, fleeing, and a car. The car stopped, he said, and the shooting began. The witness called 9-1-1. Police arrived in minutes. And the witness said he helped officers count the number of bullet casings. And the final number was shocking. 'We ended up counting out 38 shell casings,' he said. That's crazy.' Perhaps crazier, the fact those dozens of bullets fired apparently hit no one. 'We don't have anything on anybody being sent to the hospital,' the witness said, 'But time will tell.' Clarendon Hill Towers is located in Somerville, where Broadway drains into Alewife Brook Parkway. It's close to Tufts University and residents tell Boston 25 News it has not been, in their experience, a place for gunshots of any kind. 'A lot of people were shocked,' said Abdul Ahmed, another Clarendon Hill Towers resident. 'There are kids here, there's a school here, there's a veteran's shelter here. It doesn't happen here. It's a very quiet neighborhood.' But the Somerville shooting was preceded ten hours earlier by a similar incident in Cambridge -- again, in an area not known for violent crime. Cambridge Police said they found evidence of multiple gunshots at the corner of School Street and Bishop Allen Drive -- those shots were fired around 2:15 on Monday afternoon. Again, no one was injured. It's unknown whether the incidents are connected. Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne said, in a statement, that the incident is deeply concerning and that she's relieved no one was hurt. She said the Somerville Police Department continues to investigate the shooting. 'Whether or not that investigation ultimately links this to gang activity, we take all incidents of gun violence extremely seriously,' the mayor said. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
CBS News
24-02-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Chelsea, Somerville sue Trump administration for "politicized attack" on sanctuary cities
The cities of Chelsea and Somerville filed suit on Monday, asking a federal judge to block the Trump administration's efforts to withhold funding from so-called "sanctuary jurisdictions." "Unless we storm the local sandwich shops they say they'll take away our federal funds, funds that we pay taxes for, no matter who it hurts in our community," said Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne at a news conference. Both cities are being represented by Lawyers for Civil Rights. "The Massachusetts cities of Chelsea and Somerville bring this action to prevent the federal Executive Branch from defunding their police forces and other essential public safety functions as part of a politicized attack on 'sanctuary jurisdictions,'" lawyers said in the complaint. The cities stand to lose tens of millions of dollars if the Trump administration follows through on threats to withhold funding from sanctuary cities. "President Trump and his agencies have said in no uncertain terms that he plans to strip federal funding from sanctuary cities," said Oren Sellstrom, the Litigation Director for Lawyers for Civil Rights. Trump border czar targets Boston The lawsuit comes days after President Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, had some harsh words for Boston and the city's police commissioner, Michael Cox, at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "The police commissioner of Boston, you said you'd double down on not helping the law enforcement offices of ICE. I'm coming to Boston, I'm bringing hell with me," Homan said, prompting applause from the crowd. "You're not a police commissioner. Take that badge off your chest, put it in your desk drawer. Because you became a politician. You forgot what it's like to be a cop." Mayor Wu defends police commissioner Mayor Michelle Wu came to her commissioner's defense saying, "It's pretty clueless for someone to be insulting our police commissioner, whose decades of experience, whose leadership in the role and whose results with our amazing police department speak for themselves." Regardless of rhetoric, Massachusetts law prevents local police officers from arresting or detaining people based solely on their immigration status. Former Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations for ICE Boston, Bruce Foucart, says that law has undoubtedly made arrests more difficult and less safe for federal immigration officers. "Why preclude law enforcement from cooperating with each other is beyond me. It's like asking the feds, it's like asking the state and locals to do this job with one hand tied behind their backs," Foucart said.
