Mayors Push Back against Trump’s Immigration Fear-Mongering

As administration officials threaten ICE raids and funding cuts, blue cities refuse to be cowed

By Shalise Manza Young

Nearly 12 years ago David Ortiz, the affable Red Sox legend, stood near the pitcher’s mound inside Fenway Park days after the Boston Marathon Bombing rocked the Boston region and shattered the jubilant atmosphere of the city’s marquee day.

“This is our f**king city,” Ortiz told the crowd. “And nobody gonna dictate our freedom.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu channeled that energy last week when she and three other Democrat mayors—New York’s Eric Adams, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, and Denver’s Mike Johnston—were summoned by the chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), to sit and answer for their approaches to handling undocumented immigrants in their respective cities. Even before the hearing began, anyone who pays attention to such things knew it would be another kabuki theater performance from Republicans, another chance to lie and lambaste those that disagree with their Dear Leader: this time blue-city mayors who aren’t following the callous policies of the Trump administration.

Wu was calm, poised and even combative at times, taking aim at barbarous “border czar” Tom Homan and at one point making Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) look like a fool.

“What I [have] heard over and over again is fear and frustration,” she said, speaking of the administration’s threatened ICE raids. “I spoke with pastors whose pews are half-empty on Sundays. Doctors whose patients are missing appointments. Teachers whose students aren’t coming to class. Neighbors afraid to report crimes in their communities, and victims of violence who won’t call the police.”

“This federal administration is making hard-working, tax-paying, God-fearing people afraid to live their lives,” she continued. “A city that’s scared is not a city that’s safe. A land ruled by fear is not the land of the free.”

Boston’s policy towards ICE reflects Wu’s convictions. The Trust Act ordinance was updated in 2019 to distinguish the role of the Boston Police Department from that of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Boston Police cooperate with federal authorities when undocumented immigrants are wanted for criminal offenses, but civil immigration offenses are left to ICE. Ordinances in Chicago, Denver and New York are similar.

In the midst of MAGA fear-mongering about undocumented immigrants bringing crime, Homan said last month that he was “bringing hell” to Boston and to police commissioner Michael Cox, who has affirmed that his officers will not be helping ICE.

“Shame on him for lying about my city, for having the nerve to insult our police commissioner, who has overseen the safest Boston’s been in anyone’s lifetime,” Wu said during her testimony. She praised Cox and mentioned several times that Boston is the safest major city in the U.S. (the population is around 675,000), with a homicide rate that has fallen in each of her years in office. In 2024, there were just 24 homicides in Boston, the lowest number since 1957.

All four mayors have seen a reduction in crime in their cities in recent years. Chicago has seen declining rates of homicides and other major crimes: according to Chicago Police Department data, last month there were nearly half as many shootings (75) as there were in February 2022 (147); robberies, armed robberies and car thefts were all down 40 percent from this time last year.

“As mayor of Chicago, nothing is more important to me than the safety and well-being of all residents,” Johnson said. “We must not let mischaracterizations and fear-mongering obscure the reality that Chicago’s crime rates are trending down. We still have a long way to go, but sensationalizing tragedy in the name of political expediency is not governing, it’s grandstanding.”

The widespread decline in crime has occurred even as three of the four mayors have seen a significant increase in migrants in their respective cities—thanks in part to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a fact conveniently omitted by Republican committee members. In March of last year, Abbott’s office proudly announced that it had bused nearly 40,000 migrants to New York City since April 2022, 32,500 to Chicago since August 2022, and in just 10 months had relocated 17,000 to Denver.

The sudden influx put a strain on Denver’s resources, with emergency shelters opened and help given connecting families to housing and individuals to jobs. Yet its resilience held.

“Denver made a choice as a city—not to hate each other, but to help each other,” Johnston said. “It wasn’t perfect, and it required sacrifice from all of us, but in the end, Denver came out stronger and closer than we were before.”

Wu pointedly noted that Boston has long been a city of immigrants, from its founding nearly 300 years ago to now, when a quarter of its residents were born outside of the United States. Many within Boston’s immigrant population come here because of its exceptional universities, stellar hospitals and biomedical research facilities and decide to stay; others come from places like Cabo Verde or Haiti or Vietnam wanting a better life, and join the vibrant communities of family and fellow countrymen that have settled here.

Chicago has welcomed not just those from outside of America’s borders throughout its history. During the Great Migration, roughly a half-million descendants of formerly enslaved people left the South and settled there.

During the hearing last week, Republicans threatened to punish this open-door legacy by taking away even more federal funding from the mayors who refused to bend to their will. The haphazard slashing of federal funding across numerous bureaus has already affected each of their cities, just as they are affecting cities and towns all over the country. Last week, the National Institutes of Health abruptly canceled millions in grant money used for any research they believe is tied to diversity, equity and inclusion, which could hit Boston particularly hard. Reduced funding for Title I schools and already-struggling VA hospitals, the unemployment of thousands of federal workers based in Boston, Chicago, Denver and New York—all of those and more have or will be coming to pass as this shambolic administration tries to bring dissenters to heel and convince Americans that the $65,000 saved from firing Desiree in the Boston Social Security office is what’s really needed to keep the deficit down.

As a Boston resident, I was proud of the way Mayor Wu stood up for us on Tuesday. And I was not alone: hundreds of people gathered on City Hall Plaza during her testimony, all but a small few there to support Wu while holding pro-immigration signs.

Boston has endured for centuries. It isn’t perfect, because nowhere is. But if Homan and the Trump administration follow through on their threats, it will take all of Boston’s residents—native-born, transplants, and immigrants—to pull together and push ahead. Wu made it clear that everyone has a home here. This is our f**king city.

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Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.