A law that spells out Somerville’s resistance to federal oppression is being strengthened, including placing limits on sharing data that could be weaponized against residents and on police work with anti-immigration enforcers; boosting support for First Amendment expressions; aid to people coming to Massachusetts for its legal freedoms; and protections for whistleblowers.
Amendments to the law, called the Welcoming Community Ordinance, will go to the Legislative Matters Committee for fine-tuning, city councilors agreed at their Monday meeting.
“It feels insane that an ordinance like this is even relevant – that we’re saying we need an ordinance that we’re not going to participate in abuses of our constitutional rights. But these are the times that we’re looking at, and we cannot pretend otherwise,” said city councilor Ben Ewen-Campen, lead author of the toughened language. “We are living through a completely unprecedented time of federal assault on our constitutional rights.”
The updates to a law introduced by council president Lance Davis in 2019 clarify that Somerville does not use its employees or resources to help the federal government or out-of-state agencies penalize people for constitutionally protected activities, or for its anti-immigrant efforts.
Also in the amendments:
Police are forbidden from investigations or actions on the sole basis of actual or perceived immigration status, unless required by federal law or a court order, and officer called to the scene of a federal immigration enforcement action have only two roles there – to try to verify the identity of federal agents, and to ensure the safety of anyone present.
New or renewed city contracts will be assessed by the Law Department for compliance with the Welcoming Community Ordinance, and employees cannot act against the ordinance. Violations may be pursued in court by a victim. And municipal employees reporting violations will get whistleblower protections.
Cambridge has a similar Welcoming Community Ordinance that was strengthened in August, and it too too bars police from cooperating in immigration enforcement. Councilor Will Mbah said he and councilor Jon Link met with their counterparts in Cambridge about their law in January, and he wasn’t “surprised when I heard that councilor Ewen-Campen was already a mile ahead on this.”
As in Cambridge, the toughened proposed language “moves beyond the symbolic sanctuary city” to try to strengthen trust between immigrant communities and local government, Mbah said.
Gideon Epstein, a policy counselor with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts worked with Ewen-Campen, agreed that the amendments gave the law teeth. He emphasized the importance of the legal review of city contracts. “Cities can unknowingly, and often do, enter data sharing and surveillance agreements with companies that contract with ICE or DHS that violate the spirit of this ordinance,” he said.
Cambridge ended a contract with Flock Safety in December when it was revealed that the company’s traffic cameras were being used to track people engaged in legal actions as well as to solve crimes. The company shocked officials by installing more cameras after being ordered to take its existing cameras down.
The First Amendment aspects of Somerville’s new Welcoming Community Ordinance provisions were tied to the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, who was taken off the street in front of her Somerville home on March 25, 2025, by federal agents. She flown out of state, detained and subjected to a monthslong legal fight just to return to her life as a Tufts grad student “for the stated reason that the president did not like an oped that she had written in her college newspaper,” Ewen-Campen said.
“Many people have been reaching out to us and the local government asking whether the city is being bullied or co-opted, or somehow our work is being co-opted, into being a tool for for these federal efforts to track people, to investigate people for doing constitutionally protected activities,” Ewen-Campen said. “Somerville does not and is not going to participate in any of these federal attacks on constitutional rights.”
The co-sponsors of the order, Link and councilor Emily Hardt, also spoke, with Hardt spotlighting the protections for people offering aid. At a time “that is so scary and sobering, one of the things that gives me a lot of hope and inspiration is the way we’ve seen neighbors helping one another. They’re looking out for one another and upholding the rule of law, and we see this right here in Somerville with rapid response networks and mutual aid work,” Hardt said.
Link called the toughening of the law a way to push back and “keep us from falling into something really, truly terrible.”
About The Author
