Sanctuary City Mayor Vows To Hunt Down Property Owners Looking To Lease To ICE

Boston Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu wants to expose property owners looking to lease parking spots to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in her sanctuary city.

The federal immigration enforcement agency recently posted about its search for property owners across the country “capable of providing surface and/or structured vehicle parking spaces in the vicinity of existing or planned ICE facilities,” according to the Boston Herald. In Boston, ICE is looking for 249 contiguous parking spaces.

In an interview Sunday, Wu said her office will file public records requests to see which private property owners have expressed interest in leasing to ICE, in hopes of contacting them.

“We as a city will be filing another FOIA request for any responses that have come in from the Boston area so that we know what information they may be sifting through,” Wu said. “We strongly oppose any expansion of their efforts here and would encourage and will be reaching out to property owners to try to make sure that they’re not adding to a surge of unlawful and dangerous activity.”

The mayor acknowledged that the city “can’t block private property [owners],” but said that officials can inform them that “this is not a way to make our community safer.”

“We look to find as much information as possible about what their plans are, what information they might be looking at in order to have the best possible response and protect our communities,” Wu said.

Wu cited recent ICE activity, including a recent operation in Maine that resulted in an officer fatally shooting a migrant, for her decision to inquire with the federal government.

“Unfortunately, we already have proof of what happens when they conduct a surge operation,” she said. “We’ve seen it in other cities, we’ve seen it to some extent in the greater Boston-Massachusetts Commonwealth area.”

“But we don’t have to look that far up to Maine, to the Twin Cities to see what happens and the life or death consequences when they take officers who are untrained and given a directive that is very far from protecting the public,” Wu said.

Boston has “already done everything possible” to stop ICE from accessing public property, the mayor said, adding that the city “will be doing whatever we can to communicate with private property owners.”

The Department of Homeland Security responded to Wu’s plan Monday, saying the “pro-criminal mayor” is “trying to intimidate Bostonians,” knowing “she has ZERO authority to block ICE from utilizing private property.”

“If PRIVATE citizens want to allow federal law enforcement onto their OWN property, they should be allowed to do so,” the agency wrote on X. “They should not face threats from their radical mayor who shamelessly compared ICE agents to a neo-Nazi group.”