What Can You Do to Help Your Immigrant Neighbors?
- Angela Page
- 19 hours ago
- 3 min read
Volunteer
The CASA Allies is a group of MetroWest residents who work with the MetroWest Worker Center-CASA to support their work with immigrants. We deliver food, provide or refer for legal services, drive immigrant children to school, provide bond sponsors (the state supplies the money), accompany people to appointments and work with LUCE to observe and document ICE activity. If you want to volunteer, email volunteerteam@mwc-casa.org to speak with someone about the different opportunities and find the one that is right for you. What is happening feels much more real when you make relationships with the people who are being affected.
Did you know there is an ICE office in Framingham? Many immigrants are required to report there. And sometimes when they report, they are put in big black cars and driven to Hanscom Airforce Base where they are flown out of state to courts where the judges are less sympathetic. Help us make people aware of this by coming to our stand out.
Every Tuesday, 8:30-10am10 Speen St., Framingham
Park in the lot on Sealtest drive for Lifetime Fitness
Call or Write your State Senator and ask them to pass The Protect Act* as soon as possible!
The House passed its redraft of the PROTECT Act, the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus’s bill to protect Massachusetts communities from increasingly lawless behavior from ICE.
The bill restricts cooperation and communication between state and local law enforcement and ICE and adds additional protections:
Prohibits law enforcement from inquiring about immigration status unless the inquiry is directly material to a specific criminal offense
Bars the use of local resources for civil immigration enforcement
Limits the sharing of nonpublic information and advance release notifications by banning the initiation of contact with ICE
Prohibits state and local law enforcement from executing, renewing, or materially expanding a 287(g) memorandum of agreement, i.e., an agreement to deputize officials as ICE agents
Limits civil arrests in courthouses by requiring a judicial warrant or order, and a review by a judicial official
Requires that employers provide written notice to employees within 48 hours of receiving a federal immigration inspection notice, such as an I-9 audit
Strengthens protections for individuals in ICE detention (i.e., requiring notice of legal rights in a person’s primary language at intake, guaranteeing confidential attorney-client communication, mandating the timely tracking of custody status and transfers with notice to counsel and designated contacts; providing interpretation services for key interactions and ensure access to court proceedings)
Reforms the certification process for victims of crime and human trafficking to remove roadblocks to securing a U/T visa
Authorizes the Governor to restrict civil immigration enforcement in nonpublic areas of state facilities, and requires multilingual guidance for agencies, private entities, law enforcement, and the public
Now, the Senate needs to take up the bill, will probably make changes, and then it has to go to a Conference Committee to create the final bill that then has to be signed by Governor Healy. At a hearing on March 18, the Governor indicated her desire to sign this bill.
What would be most helpful is to follow the bill and contact Senator Spilka when the Senate version is made public. But if you might forget, let her know now that you want the strongest protections possible for our immigrant neighbors.
*The PROTECT Act which seeks to restrict ICE activity at schools, churches and courthouses among other things, passed the Massachusetts House by a vote of 134 to 21 and will now go to the Senate who will draft their own version of the bill, which is expected to be even stronger. It is expected to also pass in the Senate. After that, it will go to a conference committee to hammer out the differences between the two versions of the bill and then come up for a vote by both branches of the legislature. Gov. Healey has stated her eagerness to sign such a law. We are advised to begin contacting State Senators as soon as there is a bill ready to vote on. More information available at this link: https://www.immigrationneedham.org/blog/task-force/protect-act-passes-the-ma-house/
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