ICE director says feds will comply with Mayor Michelle Wu's order, readily share info on 'illegal aliens' Boston is 'harboring'

Gayla Cawley, Boston Herald on Jun 11, 2025

Published in News & Features

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BOSTON — Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said the feds are happy to comply with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s executive order that seeks greater transparency around its immigration enforcement, in order to show Wu how her “lack of cooperation hurts” her city.

“We look forward to showing the great work of ICE and the criminal illegal aliens that the city is harboring,” Lyons said Wednesday in a statement to the Herald.

Lyons took aim at the Boston Trust Act, which prohibits city police and other departments from cooperating with federal immigration authorities on civil detainer requests, saying that the local law “does nothing safely.”

“Each year, the city highlights the cases that they do not work with ICE on,” Lyons said. “ICE will now show the citizens of Boston daily, weekly, monthly, etc. of what ICE is doing to arrest and remove criminal aliens from the Commonwealth.”

Lyons said that additional information will be provided in response to an executive order signed by Mayor Wu on Tuesday.

“ICE welcomes the requests for transparency because this will only help ICE and DHS show how the mayor’s lack of cooperation hurts her neighborhoods,” he said.

Wu said Tuesday that the city will be pressing for greater transparency by “regularly” filing requests for public records with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through the Freedom of Information Act, “in response to the secret police tactics that have been deployed across the country in immigration enforcement.”

The mayor said her administration will be seeking records that disclose who federal authorities are arresting, detaining and deporting, and on what grounds those actions are being taken — information that she says has been lacking.

“My advice to (border czar) Tom Homan and ICE is to take a time out, reassess what you are doing and how you are doing it,” Wu said. “A little friendly advice from the safest major city in the country. We know how to keep people safe.

“We know that requires collaboration and trust and community members holding each other and holding our law enforcement officials and city officials and state government to the highest of standards,” she added. “The American people are not stupid. No one is buying the line that these secret police tactics are making communities safer.”

Lyons said ICE is happy to share information with the city, as requested by the mayor, but won’t be changing its approach to immigration enforcement.

“The mayor is completely wrong about what ICE can learn from Boston,” Lyons said. “What ICE knows as a fact is that the city of Boston is safer because of the amazing work of the brave men and women of ICE and its DOJ partners.

“ICE, specifically ICE Boston, has arrested thousands of criminal aliens in Massachusetts that have threatened communities and neighborhoods,” he added. “What ICE has learned from the city is that its Trust Act does nothing safely. Even after Operation Patriot, it’s clearly evident ICE needs to focus on the multiple criminal aliens released back into the community due to the lack of cooperation.”

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