Many of us have grown increasingly alarmed with the Trump administration’s policies and actions regarding undocumented immigrants.
Last month our local citizens group in Pelham wrote to state Sen. Stan Rosenberg who, as the Senate president, has great influence on the course of legislation. We urged him to use this influence to help pass the Massachusetts Safe Communities Act that would set standards for local officials throughout the commonwealth.
Additionally, we presented a resolution to the Pelham Select Board supporting the act for inclusion on the warrant for Town Meeting this spring, which it unanimously approved.
We do not feel this can wait much longer. We cannot stand by as people are being rounded up outside their churches, their homes, their work places.
Consider the case of Guadalupe Garcia de Reyes who, living in the Arizona district once served by the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio, was rounded up without warning shortly after the inauguration while at an immigration office where she had dutifully reported for years, leaving behind young children.
Or the case of Juan Carlos Hernandez Pacheco, a longtime member of a town in southern Illinois, a successful restaurant owner, beloved by all including the mayor and police, recently hustled off to a detention center in Missouri, without trial, early one morning leaving behind his wife (a citizen) and three children under 8 years old.
These are people who for the most part are only guilty of the crime of not having proper documents. This “crime” is a misdemeanor in many cases and, in nearly the majority, is a civil violation that is supposed to be handled in immigration courts. They are not felons. Virtually all studies indicate crime rates amongst immigrants are lower than in the general population.
The problem is not the immigrant. The problem is a profoundly flawed immigration policy. It does not require a military-style solution with walls and an increased number of armed agents.
And now it is not just undocumented immigrants feeling the impact of these increasingly militarized approaches to dealing with a failed policy.
We are seeing activities that remind us of those frightening scenes in old World War II movies when the Nazi officer comes on the train and starts asking for “your papers.”
Consider that last month a plane from San Francisco to New York landed and no one was allowed off the plane until they showed their papers. The photo in The New York Times shows agents at the hatch of the plane forcing everyone to show them their IDs before they could deplane. And this because there was a tip that someone might be on the plane who was undocumented.
Will we be seeing agents come into our businesses, our restaurants, our clinics, our schools, our homes, stopping us at roadblocks, because they heard there might be someone undocumented?
And what about religious tests?
Consider that Muhammad Ali’s son, traveling with his mother, the great Ali’s wife, was held for one to two hours and questioned about his religion before they let him go.
We cannot afford to see how this plays out any longer. Serious resistance needs to be mounted.
We do not feel it is enough for individual towns and cities to say they won’t comply with federal requests to inform and detain immigrants as “sanctuary cities.” While we support these actions and will follow their lead in Pelham if need be, we feel this would be more effectively addressed on a statewide level.
The Safe Communities Act, introduced in the Senate by Sen. James Eldridge and in the House by Rep. Juana Matias, with over 90 co-sponsors including our newly elected representative Solomon Goldstein-Rose of Amherst, addresses the above concerns and helps prevent our state employees, officials and police from being complicit in reckless behavior.
This bill has been before the Legislature in one form or another for two years.
It is time to act, the time is now, and we urge deliberate and speedy action.
We look forward to working with our President Rosenberg and all our state senators and representatives standing up to the other president’s reckless behavior. We all need to be all in before we are asked, ”Your papers, please.”
Michael Hussin, an acupuncturist who lives in Pelham, is a member of Pelham Neighbor to Neighbor.