Marty Walsh, the Mayor of Boston, says that he will defend the rights of undocumented Irish immigrants and other undocumented immigrants if President-Elect, Donald Trump seeks to deport them when he takes over the White House, in January.
Walsh, himself the child of immigrants from Connemara, says that there is much uncertainty around whether Trump will follow through on the promises he made during the election campaign, to deport up to 11 million undocumented immigrants, which would include thousands of Irish immigrants. The Democrat Mayor says he will wait to see what the new President does with regards to the immigration policies of his new administration, but that the protections given to the undocumented in the city of Boston will stay intact regardless.
The Mayor told the Irish Times that any attempts to exclude people in Boston from their rights, people who are neighbors, and friends and family members, will be defended. Walsh says that Boston prides itself on being inclusive and welcoming of diversity and that that is not going to change.
Trump has stated that he intends to pull federal money from ‘sanctuary cities’ that prevent police from questioning the legal status of suspected undocumented immigrants when stopped. Boston is not technically one of those cities but the 2014 Trust Act fulfills a similar function. Walsh believes that deporting all the undocumented immigrants in the US would be ‘physically impossible.’