CIRC Discusses Increasing Legal Aid Resources for Immigrants, ICE Protocol in Weekly Meeting

The Cambridge Commission for Immigrant Rights and Citizenship met Tuesday to discuss the challenges facing immigrants under the Trump administration.

Commissioner Carolina Almonte said the commission has been having critical conversations about how to adapt Cambridge city policies in the wake of Trump’s push for increased deportations and threats to revoke student visas.

“I’ve been in communications about what are our own internal city policies should ICE come to a city building?” Almonte said.

“What we came up with was a policy, should ICE come to a City of Cambridge building, which is just a protocol that the law department will step in to help and verify that it’s a valid warrant and provide recourse to that employee, so that they aren’t navigating that alone,” Almonte added.

The commission has also partnered with local organizations such as the Massachusetts Immigration and Rights Advocacy Coalition and the De Novo Center for Justice and Healing to provide “Know Your Rights” trainings and expanded legal services to Cambridge residents, employees, and Cambridge Rindge and Latin Students. Almonte said two “Know Your Rights” training sessions have drawn roughly 1000 total attendees.

Among all their programming, CIRC is also planning their upcoming annual Citizenship Day on June 11, a legal clinic to assist Green Card holders with the citizenship process. Last year, the commission said they helped around 46 people on their pathway to citizenship.

Through the De Novo Center, the commission also offers free monthly immigration consultations for any Cambridge resident. Anticipating increased demand, the City of Cambridge approved the commission’s request for $50,000 to hire a part-time paralegal at the De Novo Center.

The commission also discussed upcoming programming to celebrate immigrants in Cambridge.

Compared to years past, however, supervisor Sarah Binney said community outreach workers worried that heavily advertising events celebrating immigrants would raise safety concerns for Cambridge residents and deter them from participating.

“There is a lot of hesitation about doing an extremely public event geared towards immigrant communities that's just like publicly advertised in a public park,” Binney said. “There’s a lot of fear around that.”

Instead of publicly advertising events through a “big banner in front of City Hall,” the commission will most likely rely on “existing networks” such as family liaisons at schools and outreach workers.

The meeting also featured guest speaker Shameka Gregory, the program coordinator for the Domestic and Gender Based Violence Prevention Initiative for Cambridge, who spoke about the unique challenges undocumented immigrants face when experiencing domestic and sexual violence.

“With a lot of immigrant communities, you might see coercion in different forms, coercion in the workplace, different threats about exposing them, calling ICE, or different things like that, to coerce them into sexual acts,” Gregory said.

She also said that immigrant women often face barriers receiving special U visas for domestic and sexual violence, recounting her experiences accompanying women to court during Trump’s first term.

“Every time I went to court with an immigrant survivor and they were seeking a restraining order, the conversation shifted to, ‘This is only something that they're looking for to get a U Visa. Everything that they're saying is just to get a U Visa,’” Gregory said.

Gregory also discussed the high-end brothel network that operated in Cambridge over a year ago. Charges were brought against 34 men accused of patronizing the brothel, including Cambridge City Councilor Paul F. Toner.

All of the women involved working at the brothel were immigrant women, primarily from Asia, and many of them were undocumented, Gregory said. An affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court in Boston stated that the brothel organization “used coercive tactics to maintain the fluidity and effectiveness of the rotation of women.”

Gregory said she looked into the women’s whereabouts and was able to confirm they returned to their home countries.

“I have been asking the question, where are these women? Are they okay?” Gregory said.