City Council Amends Ordinance To Bar Immigration Enforcement on City Property

The Cambridge City Council unanimously adopted amendments to the city’s sanctuary city ordinance to prevent federal immigration activity on city property — reinforcing a February executive order from City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05.

By adopting the order into law, the city’s safeguards against heightened immigration enforcement will be harder to reverse, councilors said. The city manager can revise or rescind executive orders unilaterally. But city ordinances can only be changed by a vote of the nine-member Council.

The move comes two months after the Council initially voted in support of the amendments, asking Huang to work with city departments to draft formal language. The amended ordinance also gives the city the power to seek intervention from the court if the federal government violates the ordinance.

In addition to barring federal agents from city-owned land, the ordinance imposes further restrictions on the Cambridge Police Department’s interaction with federal immigration agencies. Under the ordinance, CPD is required to release body-worn camera and surveillance footage of immigration activity and produce reports on documented interactions with federal agents every six months.

Just hours after Huang signed the executive order, CPD released a report detailing 11 interactions between officers and federal immigration agents between last September and February, adding to the five instances previously documented last year. CPD officers refused to provide information or assistance to federal agents in every case.

The report only includes interactions with federal immigration agencies, not all contact with federal officers, such as a federal officer carrying out a criminal search warrant. CPD has not released documentation of its interactions with federal immigration agents for March and April.

Former CPD Commissioner Christine A. Elow said in a late February interview that the department is working to implement the directives outlined in the executive order without endangering officers. If an officer is charged with interfering with federal law enforcement — a felony in some cases — they could face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Elow said CPD has coordinated with other sanctuary cities to monitor immigration enforcement, rolled out scenario-based training exercises, and ensured that department leadership is notified of all communication with federal agents and city officials.

The Council began looking to strengthen the ordinance last summer, but ramped up efforts to formalize the city’s response to immigration enforcement came largely in the wake of the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration officers in Minneapolis earlier this year. Though Cambridge has seen fewer immigration-related arrests than neighboring cities in the Greater Boston area, city officials have pushed to prevent any collaboration with federal immigration agencies.

The Council is also weighing another amendment to the ordinance that would bar any sworn federal immigration agent from being employed by CPD, regardless of their time of appointment. A report from city staff on the feasibility of the amendment is still pending.

—Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at shawnb.18. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.

—Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at ClaireMichal.154.