Boston’s New ICE Policy Excludes Community Voices

Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) condemns the City of Boston’s effort to move forward with critical policy decisions surrounding Boston Public Schools (BPS) and Boston Police Department (BPD) entanglement with ICE via the Boston Regional Information Center (BRIC) without vital community support.

SIM, Unafraid Educators, and other key stakeholders have been frozen out of urgent conversations surrounding BPS’s information sharing with ICE.

On the heels of the state audit of BPS, this signals even more tension and distrust between BPS and the families it purportedly serves. The failure to engage or respond to community needs follows an unfortunate pattern and practice by BPS and City Hall. For example, when the issue of BPS entanglement first came to light, Mayor Walsh claimed that “[t]he assertion that the City of Boston or the School Department is turning information over to the federal authorities is not true.” Walsh Calls Lawsuit Against BPS “Meritless.” However, by the time of Walsh’s statement, BPS had already given federal immigration authorities access to scores of student incident reports via BRIC—and continued to do so after his denial.

BPS continues to erode community trust by excluding key stakeholders, including SIM and Unafraid Educators, from policy discussions. LCR will continue litigating for greater transparency and accountability from BPS.