Dear ICE: A Love Letter From a Bostonian

Dear ICE,

Get the fuck out of my city.

Now that we've exchanged pleasantries, allow me to continue.

Boston doesn't need you. Boston doesn't want you. Our safety record speaks for itself. We're routinely recognized as America's safest major city. That's not just our Democratic Mayor speaking. That's also our police commissioner. You've heard of the police, right? The guys Republicans say we should support by "backing the blue"? Yeah, you're completely undermining them and their authority by coming in here. They're telling you you're not needed. But you insist on coming.

Scratch that. 

You don't insist on coming. You're simply lapdogs for the racist and xenophobic whims of Donald Trump and his administration. But hey, kudos to you! You're 21st-century Gestapo blindly following orders. You're not actively targeting criminals or "bad hombres." You're removing anyone with something as minor as a traffic violation. Shit, we've seen cases where you have knowingly deported U.S. citizens, including a child with cancer. But you don't care. You do what Discount Goebbels Stephen Miller and KKKristi Noem tell you to do. You're targeting Democratic cities with mayors of color like Los Angeles, Chicago, and now Boston. Your mission is simple: try to portray these mayors and these cities as being unsafe so you can continue your for-profit work to try to fill as many private prisons as possible with undocumented immigrants. Donald Trump promised his sheeple millions of deportations, yet even with a recent surge, he's still well off the pace. You are simply being shipped from place to place as a PR stunt to appease King Cankles and nothing more. All while helping your party try once again to bury its direct involvement with the sex trafficking of Jeffrey Epstein.

But you know this. It's why you signed up for the job. You don't care about the fact that our immigration system is irrevocably broken. Or that 40% of the "illegals" that you're chasing actually came here legally and overstayed a VISA. You're blissfully unaware that GOP icon Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants in the 1980s. You're staying away from the "tough" areas of LA and Chicago because you know you're not man enough to go into those neighborhoods. But you're more than happy to deport an 82-year-old grandfather in Pennsylvania. You gleefully removed a gay hairdresser legally seeking asylum from Venezuela. You cheerfully deported a married couple from Orange County who lived in this country for 35 years without a single mark on their criminal record. When you are too much of a cuck to go after the gangbangers and instead snatch up people like this, it shows how your work was never about public safety and was instead about your artificial quota and nothing else.

I love my Boston neighbors. I feel safe in all 24 neighborhoods at any time of the day. Our community needs the landscapers, construction workers, kitchen staff, and home healthcare aides who choose to make this city home. You can ride public transportation and hear a multitude of languages being spoken. You can visit Chinatown or Little Italy for their cultural heritage. You can order food from dozens of ethnic restaurants, many of them started by first-generation immigrants. Our children learn about Dia de Los Muertos, Holi, and Ramadan from their peers in school. I myself have co-workers with families from Haiti, Ghana, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, and I am a better person and better professional by learning from them daily. Immigrants, not ICE, make our communities safe and make our communities great.

So, prepared to be heckled when we see you. Be prepared to be called "Trump's Gestapo" to your faces. Because if you think Boston has insufferable sports fans, wait until you see us go toe-to-toe with an invading government agency. This past year, we just celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Anti-authoritarianism drips in our blood, in our soul. We love to tell the world how we were the ones who overthrew the king. Now imagine a 21st-century version of that, where we force out a bunch of cosplaying soldiers trying to haul away a Portuguese grandmother. Because while Boston may have a well-deserved reputation for being standoffish, we are fiercely loyal to our own. Try to fuck with one of us, and you fuck with all of us. Because as Red Sox legend David Ortiz announced after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, "This is our fucking city."

And none of us wants you here.

Ready and waiting, 
The City of Boston