DA won’t prosecute 18 ICE protesters
Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins said her office won’t pursue charges against the 18 protesters arrested Tuesday outside the Boston ICE detention center.
“I believe that challenges to ICE’s actions are most effectively effectuated in court,” Rollins said in a statement. “The protesters’ peaceful challenge of the inhumane detention policies of the Trump administration is protected by the First Amendment.”
Through the “Never Again Action” group, hundreds of protesters Tuesday marched from the New England Holocaust Memorial to the Suffolk County House of Correction, where ICE houses some of its detainees. Protesters called for the end of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, closure of the border camps and to abolish ICE.
Cata Santiago, community organizer for Movimiento Cosecha, said the 18 arrested were from the Jewish community, who “expressed their solidarity for the broad immigrant community through their arrests.”
“It was a way to set the example of what it means to care for and respect the immigrant community,” Santiago said, describing how the 18 locked arms and sat on the building’s steps.
Santiago said Rollins’ refusal to prosecute demonstrated that politicians are beginning to show their support and that it “spoke volumes.”
Maddy Popkin, with the Boston Workmen’s Circle Center for Jewish Culture and Social Justice, confirmed that some of those arrested were from their organization.
“We feel that we can’t be complacent and sit and wait for change because we the people have the power to demand and enact change,” Popkin said when asked about the arrests, adding that it was important for the Jewish community to stand with immigrants because they knew what it was like “to be persecuted and families torn apart” when immigrating to the United States.
“So we marched and inherited the fight of our ancestors,” Popkin said.
Lily Fisher Gomberg, who said she was one of the 18 protesters arrested Tuesday, said she commends Rollins on her decision.
“As activists, we protested peacefully, did not resist arrest, and did not have past charges. There would have been no reason to process our charges,” Gomberg wrote in a statement to the Herald.
Gomberg said that when the case was dismissed, many of the activists “cried tears of relief and pride.”