Wu working to find out which property owners may want to lease parking to ICE, she says

Boston officials are attempting to find out which, if any, private property owners responded to a recent ICE proposal to lease parking spaces in the city, Mayor Michelle Wu said over the weekend. 

In late July, ICE published a notice on a government procurement website seeking sources that could potentially lease parking spaces. The immigration enforcement agency sought information from cities around the country, including Boston. ICE said specifically that 249 parking spaces could be needed in Boston. 

The notice was “issued solely for market research and information-gathering purposes,” the description reads. The market research is being conducted in order to “identify sources capable of providing surface and/or structured vehicle parking spaces in the vicinity of existing or planned ICE facilities,” according to federal officials. 

ICE’s local headquarters is currently in an office park in Burlington, where demonstrators regularly protest the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Detainees, lawyers, and activists have often voiced concerns about the conditions inside the facility. 

ICE has not announced any definitive plans to expand or move its regional field office into Boston, and Wu is staunchly opposed to that possibility. 

Appearing on WCVB’s “On The Record” Sunday, Wu said that she has not heard anything from ICE directly. 

“This is not a surprise, because even when we’ve asked for specific information it’s been difficult or impossible to get it,” she said. 

The Wu administration has been submitting formal requests for information about people being arrested by ICE in the city, but information remains scarce, the mayor has said. 

Now, the city is set to file another Freedom of Information Act request to ICE “for any responses that have come in from the Boston area” regarding the notice about parking space leases, Wu said on WCVB. The goal is to find out as much information as possible about any potential plans so that the city can adequately respond, Wu said. 

She took action earlier this year to bar federal officials from using city-owned property to stage immigration raids or process detainees. 

On top of the FOIA request, the Wu administration is going to contact private property owners in order to “make sure they understand our view on how dangerous this could be for our residents and that this is not a way to make our community safer,” the mayor said. 

Wu acknowledged that she could not block ICE from leasing private property. She referenced the deadly ICE surge in Minnesota earlier this year and heightened enforcement activity in Maine. A Colombian man, 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Biddeford last month. The shooting sparked wide protests. Further reporting uncovered that the ICE agent allegedly responsible has a history of mental health issues and violent behavior. 

The shooting and other incidents in Maine and Minnesota showed the “life to death consequences” of what happens when poorly trained officers are given a directive that is “very far from protecting the public,” Wu said. 

“We oppose any mechanisms to allow them to do that here,” she added. 

ICE officials continued to criticize Wu Monday, posting an image of an alleged rapist online with the caption: “These are the types of sick criminal aliens that Gov. Healey and Mayor Wu seek to protect.”

Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, and Stephen Lynch conducted an unannounced oversight visit to the Plymouth County Correctional Facility on Friday. The facility is the only one in the state that currently holds civil immigration detainees on a long-term basis, the lawmakers said. They sharply criticized ICE and the Trump administration afterward.