By Daniel Lander
Nine of our neighbors in Allston are violently detained at gunpoint at a carwash. A graduate student is surrounded and kidnapped off the streets of Somerville. A Medford teen snatched and
detained while driving to volleyball practice. A five-year-old with autism used as bait to try to detain her father in Leominster. A 13-year-old abandoned on the sidewalks of Waltham after ICE grabbed the adult they were with.
Here in Massachusetts and across the country, our families, students, friends, colleagues and neighbors are being disappeared and deported. We are witnessing horrific and traumatizing violations of human rights.
Elsewhere in the country, legislatures are standing up for their residents: The Maryland legislature passed a law prohibiting contracts between local law enforcement and ICE. The California legislature passed a law prohibiting ICE from using masks and requiring officers to show identification. New York and New Mexico are in the process of taking similar proactive steps.
Our State House needs to stand up and protect us. We are the only Democratically-controlled state in the country to have a formal cooperation agreement with ICE.
Our legislative inaction is unacceptable. Bills like the Safe Communities Act have been before the legislature for more than a decade, yet the legislature has not moved. It should not take the murders of US Citizens for the legislature to stand up for our rights.
In the State Senate, I will fight to:
● Ensure that ICE is barred from our schools, our court houses, hospitals, and our houses of
worship.
● Prevent local law enforcement from carrying out civil immigration
● End masking and require ICE to show identification
● Ban state partnerships with ICE
Our communities deserve urgent leadership that won’t sit on the sidelines when our neighbors are disappearing from our streets. I promise to fight to protect our communities.
Daniel Lander is a Candidate for State Senate to represent Allston Brighton, the Fenway, Belmont, Watertown, and West Cambridge.