As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence ramps up in cities across the country, the Medford community has been organizing resources and systems to anticipate activity within the city. While the City Council has enacted several ordinances to curb ICE powers, including the Welcoming City ordinance from early last year, community movements have stepped up efforts to recruit members and establish networks should ICE activity become more apparent.
Medford has expressed strong anti-ICE sentiment, particularly through the Medford City Council’s legislation in recent months. Council President Zac Bears has been at the forefront of city ordinances, most recently supporting Councilor Anna Callahan’s resolution to ban law enforcement from wearing face coverings and reinforce Fourth Amendment protections.
“We need to protect people’s civil rights … regardless of their documentation status. It’s really been on the council to take the lead on that, make sure that our laws are meeting the moment and then making sure the administration is enforcing our local laws fully,” Bears said.
While city councilors have been accused in the past of prioritizing federal issues over local concerns, the council hopes to maintain constant communication with residents about potential ICE activity and available resources. Bears noted that the city wants to create more direct communication with residents, especially immigrant families.
“We’ve been asking for more action, more communication, regular updates, a clear place on our city’s website for residents to be able to understand how we’re engaging in this moment around ICE and immigration,” Bears said.
Collaboration has also extended to other municipalities, as Bears has spoken with neighboring council members about plans to form a larger regional response to ICE action. Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn co-authored a statement with Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang as chairs of the Metro Mayors Coalition calling for ICE to leave Boston-area communities.
Local organizations like Mystic Mashup Indivisible and Safe Medford have collaborated with the city to promote mutual aid and broader community support for residents impacted by ICE activity.
Micah-Shalom Kesselman, a member of Safe Medford, LUCE and Medford People Power, has worked with councilors on revising ordinances in the Public Health and Community Safety Committee, the body that will hear Callahan’s face-covering resolution.
While there is no formal resource-sharing program between cities, Kesselman hopes to establish stronger ties between different city actions and resources.
Some organizations already cover a large area with a broad focus on community support. Mystic Mashup Indivisible, a local chapter of the national grassroots pro-democracy Indivisible movement, encompasses Medford, Somerville, Everett and Malden. Meghan Searl, a co-founder of Mystic Mashup Indivisible, noted that the organization’s goals were not originally centered around ICE activity but have evolved to respond to national events and community needs.
“[We] really look to organizations that specialize in protection of immigrants in ICE activities such as LUCE, such as [Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network],” Searl said. “We try and support or bolster the activity that they’re doing, whether it’s spreading the word or writing letters.”
Mystic Mashup is also leading a campaign to boycott Citizens Bank for its association with ICE agents.
Mobilization and mutual aid are also vital parts of many of the organizations across Medford, with services ranging from providing food and clothing to families in need to more ICE-specific help, such as raising legal funds or walking children to school if families are worried about potential ICE interactions. Other groups source financial aid to support families whose primary earner was arrested by ICE. To garner more resident involvement, Mystic Mashup is organizing protest gatherings that are open to all community members.
“Getting a lot of people engaged in that kind of [protest] action is important because it is persuasive. It helps generate energy. It sort of sets the example for people who might want to be involved but aren’t quite ready,” Searl said.
Searl is also part of a fledgling Medford initiative called the Medford Community Response Network that is recruiting community members to serve as neighborhood community representatives to share information and resources across local and state organizations should ICE presence become more pronounced in Medford.
“The ethos behind it is the idea that we have power as ordinary people, and while we do look to our leaders for help … what we can do is we can build communities. We can share our strengths and our kinds of services or skills that we have, and there’s actually quite a bit that we can do that we might not necessarily be aware of,” Searl said.
Bears echoed the importance of building a strong community through constant communication and engagement. “What I’ve heard from neighbors is that they are scared, but they feel less scared and they feel stronger when they are heard by their local government and when they are working together with their neighbors to protect and defend our community,” Bears said.
