Undocumented Immigrant Leaves Waltham, Seeks Refuge In Cambridge Church

WALTHAM, MA – The city council approved a resolution designating Waltham as a "Welcoming City" for immigrants last month, but that didn't seem to help a woman who lived and worked and raised her children in Waltham, according to an article in the Boston Globe.

The Globe reported this may be the first family in the state to take advantage of a church's offer to shelter immigrants seeking asylum since President Donald Trump started cracking down on people living in the US illegally.

This woman was seeking asylum in the US as she feared for her life and for the lives of her daughters she said. So, when the US denied her that status, she stayed anyway. The Globe doesn't go into whether she actually sought help in Waltham first, but it still raises the question for some about just what Waltham can do in these types of situations.

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"Waltham City Council declares its commitment to ensuring that Waltham remains a community that is supportive and safe for immigrants who have made Waltham their home," reads the city's resolution.

But unlike Newton's "Welcoming City" ordinance, the designation did not define policy in Waltham, instead aiming to reaffirm the city's dedication to its immigrant community, said Councilor-at-Large Carlos Vidal. He said it took more than two months before the city council would even come to the table to discuss the proposal that he and Ward 8 Councilor Stephen Rourke drafted.

"It's really a symbolic gesture," Vidal told the Waltham Patch. The resolution has no teeth beyond that, he said. "We're not a Sanctuary City, there isn't really anything on the city level we can do," he said in a phone interview.

There is a group that came together near the end of last year called Progressive Waltham that is interested in issues such as this, he said, but added that they're still a new group so it's unclear how much leverage they have.

Vidal said he hadn't personally heard of the Globe story or the woman's plight or ICE knocking on anyone's door in the city. But when pressed on what he might advise someone in a similar position to do in Waltham, he said he's recommend a straight and narrow approach. "Stay vigilant and follow the law. Don't get yourself into trouble," he said, adding. "It's an uphill battle."

The mayor said in a statement early this year that Waltham Police only pursued Immigration Customs Enforcement requests if an individual was wanted for a "serious" crime.

Read the the story about the Waltham woman here in the Boston Globe.

Photo By Jmorgan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons