Mass. cities like Somerville are preparing for the next ICE surge, if there is one - The Boston Globe

SOMERVILLE — As tensions flare in Minneapolis over a surge of immigration enforcement, and as federal agents ramp up activity in Maine, deep-blue cities like this one are quietly preparing for the possibility that a shock-and-awe style immigration crackdown might come here next.

“Many folks in Somerville like me are incredibly worried about when it’s our turn,” said Jonathan Feingold, a dad who said he makes a point of scanning for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in his neighborhood every day after school drop-off.

He said he has been doing that since September, since the last time ICE agents seemed to surge into Somerville and were seen circling the streets, detaining a carload of workers outside a Dunkin’, and interrogating people on sidewalks.

He has followed with unease the current operation in Minnesota, which is among the biggest and most explosive of Trump’s term, and has led to 3,000 arrests so far, according to a count released this week by the Department of Homeland Security.

“It’s utterly gruesome,” he said. “It raises really hard questions about what it actually takes to defend oneself when you see people getting ripped out of cars, when you see whole families getting taken from their homes.”

President Trump has said the big show of force around Minneapolis is necessary to crack down on illegal immigration and root out fraud.

Local immigrants, activists, and officials say they see the recent emphasis on Minneapolis as political, and that any blue city that self-identifies as a sanctuary for immigrants could soon see ICE at its doorstep if the president wills it so.

There is history here. One of the early prominent cases of targeted immigration enforcement last year was the detention in Somerville of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, which spurred fear — and a wave of outrage.

Across the state, people are on tenterhooks.

“What’s happening in Minnesota can happen in Massachusetts at any minute,” said Dálida Rocha, the executive director of Neighbor to Neighbor, a social services group in Worcester. “We’re bracing for it.”

Rocha, a Cape Verdean immigrant, is an organizer of the LUCE network, a constellation of groups in dozens of cities, including Somerville, that pool resources to track ICE activity and run a hotline where people can report sightings.

They’ve been busy. So far, Rocha said, they have trained some 2,000 “verifiers,” who respond to areas where people spot masked officers in tactical gear gathering, or see SUVs loitering in immigrant neighborhoods.

Efforts vary community-to-community, but have included distributing whistles people can blow to alert their neighbors, and pink and purple vests verifiers wear to identify themselves.

Somerville volunteers have been particularly vigilant, papering the city’s utility poles with LUCE fliers, finding lawyers who will be on call to help when someone is detained, and signing up to do “ICE watch” patrols in their neighborhoods.

Since the last surge in the fall, the preparations have taken different forms. One local faith leader who has helped people in Somerville with immigration issues said their church has put extra effort into fund-raising, in case there is a lot of need for support in the event people are being detained in greater numbers.

“When the surge comes and my focus is less on my congregation and more on community care, at least we’ll have money in our savings,” said the faith leader, who asked not to be identified to protect the church from retaliation by federal officials.

City Halls are also grappling with how best to prepare for an ICE surge if it arrives.

Somerville this year inaugurated a new mayor, Jake Wilson, who said he started formulating a response to the immigration enforcement crackdown before he took office.

In a statement, he said that the city and its Office of Immigrant Affairs would continue hosting “Know Your Rights” trainings on what to do if stopped by an ICE agent, bolstering its work connecting people to legal representation and “strengthening support networks to ensure that family left behind when a loved one is detained don’t suffer the extra burdens of struggling to afford or manage basic needs alone.”

In the meantime, activists said they are recruiting and training volunteers and raising money for legal aid and other needs that might arise when the proverbial other shoe drops.

Other residents are considering taking steps they never thought they would need to at a time when US citizens, too, are getting caught in the ICE dragnet.

Anisa, a citizen who lives in Somerville and whose background is Somali, plans to carry a copy of her American passport with her in case she is asked to verify her status on the spot.

“I just don’t feel prepared for what is to come,” said Anisa, who asked that her last name not be printed to protect her from online abuse. “That lack of knowledge and lack of control is very unsettling.”

Scenes of violence in Minneapolis have not discouraged local activists from getting involved.

Just the opposite, said state Representative Mike Connolly of Cambridge, especially after the shooting death of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis and the protests across the country that came in response to it, including in the Boston area.

“Now, I’m hearing from residents who haven’t been involved saying, ‘I want to get involved. I want to be part of the next ICE watch,’” Connolly said.

Tactics have changed over time. LUCE, for example, no longer tells recruits to knock on the windows of ICE agents and ask what they are doing in a neighborhood, and are reminded not to physically interfere with ICE activity.

For many, Good’s death showed that being seen as confronting immigration enforcement carries risk.

Somerville City Councilor Matt McLaughlin said he still keeps at front of mind his experience in the city during the surge of ICE activity last fall, when he watched as a man was detained after being stopped on a sidewalk.

A crowd of people formed to watch and film the incident, he said, which he credits with helping identify him and get him help.

“It was a group of residents — not radical activists, just people who care about the community — and to know that one of them could get shot in the face for just bearing witness is incredibly troubling to me," he said. “It gives me pause to tell people to continue bearing witness. But I think we have to.”

Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.