Mayor Joe Curtatone signed the executive order Thursday directing police not to detain people based solely on immigration status.~Photo by Douglas Yu

By Douglas Yu

Mayor Joe Curtatone signed the executive order Thursday directing police not to detain people based solely on immigration status as required under the federal Secure Communities program.

“Thank you for choosing Somerville as your home. This is your city.” Curtatone said during the signing event at the public safety building. “What we’ve been fighting for is our collective values as a community. Tonight, we are taking a very important step to protect our neighbors and families.”

Curtatone said the executive order was issued in order to protect neighborhoods and promote public safety.

“We’re not going to let members in our community who share our values and contribute to our economy be pushed into the shadows,” he said of what he felt the Secure Communities program has done to people.

According to the city, there have been more than 1,000 deportations in Massachusetts alone since the program was enacted two years ago, and 10 Somerville residents have been detained.

However, Curtatone did not offer details about the cases relating to the 10 Somerville detainees.

Somerville is the first city in the state to limit local law enforcement’s involvement in holding people found to be in the country illegally based solely on immigration status on behalf of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which created the Secure Communities program.

In addition, California and Connecticut have each passed a statewide TRUST Act, which limits the state’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities by only holding immigrants with criminal records for ICE.

In response to the effectiveness of the signing an executive order, Curtatone and Alderman at Large Jack Connolly both agrees that time will test the action.

Mayor Curtatone, members of the Board of Alderman, and ACLU attorney Laura Rotolo participated in the press conference announcing the mayor’s executive order regarding the Secure Communities program.

“You can see the support from the majors cities around country, like New York, Miami and New Orleans, which all took similar policies and justices,” Curtatone said in noting that more and more municipalities across the country are taking similar actions to promote public safety.

Curtatone said that better cooperation with the police and law enforcement had been seen where TRUST Acts were passed and similar policies were adopted.

In the past two years, according to the city, 61 percent of the people deported through Secure Communities have no criminal convictions. In some cities and towns in Massachusetts, that percentage rises to 79 percent.

On the other hand, some Somerville residents questioned this series of statistics about those deported people. They are suspicious about the inaccuracy of the survey.

“There are facts,” Curtatone responded. “The Secure Communities program, although well-intended, has some serious negative consequences. You have [U.S.] citizens detained, and you are deporting people who are not dangerous to our community. But the consequence can also be breaking up their families and making the community not safe.”

Connolly acknowledged that mistakes could happen during the detention of by and on behalf of ICE, and that is the reason why 5 percent of people held under detainers turned out to be U.S. citizens.

“Somerville is sending a message to the entire country that we should protect documented immigrants and otherwise,” Connolly said.

As Somerville mayor, Curtatone is also the city’s chief executive officer, according to Connolly. And Somerville’s mayor is the only mayor in the commonwealth that has the right to make the decision on his own to withdraw the city from the program, and that means, the decision making process did not involve the votes from the Somerville residents, nor the other city officials.

“What we will not do is simply arresting you because you have statuses on the undocumented system,” Curtatone said. “Deporting makes no sense, and it’s never going to happen. We need to fix the system.”