Background

The ACLU of Massachusetts and Greater Boston Legal Services filed a public records request in March 2019 seeking information about a joint “task force” between the Boston Police Department (BPD) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The request followed a U.S. Department of Labor complaint alleging that two BPD officers—one of them a member of a “BPD-ICE task force”—were instruments of an employer’s unlawful retaliation against an injured worker. The City’s response, received October 2019, and described in this WBUR story, includes a 2014 Memorandum of Understanding between the BPD and ICE and emails between federal officials and the BPD during parts of 2017 and 2019.