Family’s crisis shows Cambridge needs a hotline and liaison for handling Ice threats, mayor says
A 24-hour immigration emergency hotline and on-call city liaison is proposed for Cambridge after an after-hours crisis emerged Wednesday involving “escalating interactions with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents,” said mayor E. Denise Simmons in a policy order to be considered Monday.
Simmons was almost a no-show at a Wednesday political forum held by the housing advocacy group A Better Cambridge, appearing only at the end to explain why she’d been missing: “As I was preparing to come over here, I got a call about a situation with one of our families. [It] has been ensnared in a fast-evolving situation with Ice and was placed in contact with my office just recently – this evening, just before the forum started,” Simmons said.
“We’re living in some very dark times right now, and unfortunately, those dark times are getting closer and closer to our front door,” Simmons said, explaining later that she found the parents of a Cambridge Rindge and Latin School student were “wearing Ice-issued ankle monitors, had their visas confiscated and were facing imminent risk of detention and deportation, all without access to clear guidance or rights-based information.”…