Incorruptible Mass

ACLU: Fighting Trump for Immigrants

• Anna Callahan • Season 6 • Episode 7

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We have an important conversation with Laura Rotolo, the senior advocacy director for field initiatives at the ACLU of Massachusetts, in part three of our series on immigration during the Trump administration. We discuss how current actions on immigration attack our democratic foundations, why the administration has chosen such a brazen approach, and how we can push back to defend immigrants and the rule of law.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our mission here is to help us transform politics because we know that when the Commonwealth leads, we can transform the rest of the nation. We continue our deep dive into immigration.


You may have noticed our fearless leader, Anna Callahan, is out today for some personal reasons. So Jonathan and I will do our best in her absence to have this conversation. Today we're joined by Laura, senior advocacy director for field initiatives at the ACLU of Massachusetts.


I'll let her introduce herself, but before we do, let me introduce my co-host, Jonathan. Hi, my name is Jonathan Cohen. He/him/his, joining from the South End in Boston.


I've been active in different progressive issue and electoral campaigns in Boston for a little over a decade now. My name is Jordan Burke Powers. I use he/him and I am the former executive director of Mass Alliance.


I've done lots of work in Massachusetts politics and politics around the country. And I joined the ACLU as a card-carrying member when I saw the movie the American Presidents and he said you should be all a card-carrying member of the ACLU. And then I was like, well, why don't I become a card-carrying member of the ACLU? And I have been a card-carrying member since the 90s, since I saw that movie.


It's one of a card-carrying member of the ACLU. With that, let's introduce Laura. Hey everybody, thank you so much for having me on.


I love that story. I've been a card-carrying staff member, I suppose, at ACLU for over 18 years. I'm Laura Rotolo, I live in Medford.


I've been in Massachusetts for over 20 years at this point, maybe almost 30 years I think. I was born in Argentina, immigrated to the US, and lived in New York. Grew up in New York after that and then came to Tufts and stayed here, Got two kids, a husband, nephews, you know, family around and it's nice to be in this area.


So thanks for having me. So it seems like a quiet time these days at the ACLU. Yes, it's really, really busy and really, really difficult right now for everybody.


For the ACLU all over the country, we have offices in every state, in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and we're all just working round the clock. Yeah, I'd be curious.


And this is like before we do kind of the deep dive, what is that kind of collaboration between different, let's say like state level and what's the correct term? Is it like a state-level affiliate or chapter? Yeah, affiliate. Affiliate. How is that? How has that been now kind of insofar as it's on the national level, typically ends up being, let's say, like crisis after crisis, undermining the Constitution in one way and another.


So that in the way that it's like probably fills people's time, all of it and then some. What does that kind of work between states? Not just at the state level, Ben? Like, how are the different states kind of collaborating to push back? Yeah, sure. And so, you know, a little background.


ACLU is 104 years old just. And then actually our Massachusetts affiliate is a few months older than the national affiliate. We always love to say that we have the first Constitution, first ACLU affiliate, and we have affiliates in every state.


And we've just had tremendous growth since obviously our beginnings and 104 years ago to a powerful civil rights organization where we work on basically every issue that’s related to civil rights and civil liberties. So we work across issue areas interdepartmentally, intersectionally. We have lawyers, lobbyists, organizers, communications folks, fundraisers, you name it.


We try to do a little bit of everything. And we work with our national office, which tends to be sort of like issue area experts and have a bird's eye view on the whole country. And then we work across affiliates.


So I collaborate a lot with our New England affiliates as well, especially on immigration. We share notes, we compare notes. Now we have a weekly call about immigration with all the other affiliates where we really compare notes about what's happening on the ground.


So we are in constant contact and very lucky to have just some of the most amazing colleagues around the country to do this work with. So then let's obviously talk about continuing this series about immigrants’ rights. The immigrant community in Massachusetts has been under attack from the Trump administration.


How is what we've been seeing now, how does that compare to what folks at the ACLU were preparing to happen? So last year, I would presume, let's say the ACLU was working on the disaster scenario planning for Trump that I wish that more entities in this country were had been doing that work of like preparing for what if the Trump administration does the exact things that the Trump administration says it is going to do. But with that work and then the ACLU had done some of “how has what's been playing out now compared to what folks were already kind of gaming out and trying to get ready to respond to?” We did scenario planning for about a year before the election gaming out, you know, both wins and then like a third possibility of if we didn't have a president.


Right. If there wasn't. The election was so, so messy that we didn't know who the president was going to be.


So we sort of gamed out all that. And for a potential Trump win, we had a know their blueprint, which was Project 2025. And so we studied that very deeply and we started to prepare responses to each one of those scenarios.


And what we're seeing now is that they are making true on their word to dismantle democracy and rights and the government using Project 2025 as a blueprint and then going even further. I don't know that any of us really predicted the Department of DOGE, this department or the outsized presence that Musk would have. I don't know that we really predicted that.


We were working on what we knew and, you know, had some, some imagination beyond that. But I think even with all that preparation, we're still seeing things that maybe we didn't even imagine. And when they said that they were going to flood the zone, that is exactly what's happening, is that they are just, every day it's a fresh new attack on our basic civil rights.


But, you know, we're 104 years old. We've been here, we're going to continue to be here, and so is this country and so are the people who are fighting for it. And I feel like this is very painful right now, but we are going to get through it.


We're going to get through it together because this country has been through so much and we're going to rise above it. One of the things that I think is just hard for people to get is we say, “oh, the ACLU is suing and all these other things,” but the reason is because it's just illegality. They're not flooding the zone with reasonable things that are at the margins, that are gray areas.


They're just straight up breaking laws. The easiest way to think about it is they're just bank robbers robbing every bank all at once and overwhelming the system. And we think, we don't think of these things as bank robberies, but they are.


They're just breaking laws. Because see how there's a really simple thing that happens, though. The legislative branch passes a law, let's say funding, and then the executive branch signs the law, and then there's a review in the courts maybe, and they're done.


And then that's the law. One person in that branch can't decide, “you know what, screw it, we're just going to not do that.” And that's what's happening.


Like, if the Republicans don't want to fund things, then they go through a legislative process and then they pass it and then it goes through an executive branch and someone signs it, then it gets a judicial review. They're not doing any of those things. And so what they're doing is illegality.


It's just illegal. And the reason. And so even great organizations like the ACLU are forced to sue to try to get them to do.


But I think it's always important to remember that one, that they just have the executive branch and they're breaking the law and, and they're breaking. And not like, like, it's not facetious, like, just like straight up, like, you know, like citizenship doesn't exist anymore, even though it's clearly written down. Right.


Like just banker, like just absolute bank robber stuff, you know, and, and thankfully the ACLU is there to stop it. But I do think we should always just have a clear head on what's happening. This isn't an administration that's trying to get the most out, like many administrations get the most out of what is legally feasible.


They're just straight-up ignoring any democratic processes, any straight-up words in black-and-white laws, and seeing what they can get away with. And I think that that's important to hold in this moment when we're thinking about how immigration then fits into that. And like.


Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Sorry, Laura, Go.


No, I just totally agree. They're throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. And I think they know that a lot of this is illegal.


Right. Like the birthright citizenship case we knew was coming, we sued on day one. Like hours after that executive order happened, there was one lawsuit and then another, and then another because we knew that was coming.


And we feel confident that the Supreme Court will uphold this law. Right. Like, we feel confident that that's going to happen, but they're going to try anyway and they're going to keep us busy and something's going to stick.


Right. And they're going to win. Some of these cases that we don't think they should win, but they're throwing so many out there that they will win some of them.


And I think the mention of the just blatantly unconstitutional attack on birthright citizenship I think like, segues well into kind of a question I was going to ask. So with that, that you see the way in which the Trump administration is doing things that are like such clear, unconstitutional overreaches. And by doing that and doing that early on, tries to shape the narrative around the things that they do, like other things that they're trying to get away with later on.


The other thing that I wanted to tag in with this question is what of those first few months when it comes to immigration? How are they different than the first few months back in 2017? Are there things that are like that are happening now that you would say are very unique to the second term or things that also happened in the first term but are now just happening at a greater scale and with greater lawlessness? I think we have to remember that the first term, the first thing that happened was the Muslim ban, right? And that caught everybody off guard. And I remember those days of having people who became our clients or who were just calling us stuck, like it mid-flight, right? They were going from one country to the US or maybe somewhere in between. And mid-flight, the Muslim ban came down.


And all of a sudden, they couldn't come to the U.S. They were stuck. We had to rally.


We had a whole bunch of volunteers who came together. We put together a call center, were in law firms, went into court in several states, including Massachusetts, late into the evening getting those emergency orders. I think what we're seeing now is that everyone's learned their lesson.


They've learned their lesson, we've learned our lesson. We're better prepared, and they're being more aggressive. And so we're not seeing a messy Muslim van.


But what we are seeing in terms of immigration is a ramping up of enforcement. The executive orders set the tone for this massive use of force. And our immigration laws are so that they didn't have to do a lot to get more authority to do this.


They're just, like you said, Jordan, breaking the law and using existing laws. So the executive order that came down, for example, made certain groups of people enemy aliens and changed the focus of enforcement to not just people with criminal records or people who are threats to the U.S., but everyone, right? And just setting the stage for that ramping up.


And so we're seeing just more ICE activity everywhere. We're seeing them out on the streets. We're seeing them like this kind of show of force.


In addition, the first few weeks were a lot of just, scare tactics, but few arrests. And then they started getting some bad press that they weren't meeting their quotas of arrests. And then they ramped up again with like a second wave where they, where ICE was teaming up with federal agencies and we were seeing both a show of force and more arrests.


So we saw a lot in Chelsea, in Boston, in Springfield and Pittsfield. ICE going in with the FBI, with the ATF, with drug enforcement agencies, with other big federal criminal enforcement agencies to make more immigration arrests. So that is both, you know, that is tearing families apart and just terrorizing, terrorizing communities who now see ICE agents and others out and about a lot more than before.


Yeah, sorry. Oh, just very quickly, one thing that I thought that you noted was such a good point is that combination of how they are both exploiting existing laws and then also going like ramping things up and then like with the ramping up in ways that often break the law. But the former of how much discretion, like the kind of the discretionary space that always exists in the enforcement of law.


And when I think about that, I think about let's say about people who speed. Everybody, like the vast majority of people listening to this podcast who exist in the world have some time or other driven above the speed limit and that. But we exist in a world where there is discretion, where we do not expect if you go one mile over the speed limit, that there is going to be a cop car immediately coming over to put you in hand, like to ticket you, to put you in handcuffs because what you did was clearly illegal.


Because we have a general understanding that our society would be a nightmare if that was how things operated and that discretion is a way to be.


Because there are other values that exist, like stability, safety, cohesion, cohesion, basic rights that can often kind of determine when something is worth actually enforcing to that full length and when you may. And that one of the key things that they do is if they make simply the enforcement of the thing itself because they hate the people that it is targeting.


They. They end up pushing, they end up crowding out all of the other values that typically also exist and influence discretion. Yeah.


So I wanted to highlight that one of the other things you said because I think people, you know what, “what the media told me is that they were just going to go after criminals.” And what's actually happened is that there is.


Well, one. I guess I'll just say what I know to be true, which is that they weren’t.


They can't. If they could find criminals, they would have just found criminals. They can't.


They're not. They're not. The reason ICE is deporting family people is because they're getting the people who already reported to them. They're getting people they can find easily because they're trying to meet their numbers. And that's the most logical thing that was going to happen.


Everyone. You know, I think my frustration always with the media, is that it won't say the obvious thing, but it requires some politician to say it, rather than just saying what we know to be true, which is that if there were people, gang members here, they would have been deported because we would just do that.


There's not. Right. ICE would have done that.


It existed in the Biden administration. It could do that at any time. The reason that they're ripping moms who have been here for 50 years, grandmothers who have been here for 50 years, barbers, regular people, because those are the people they can easily find because they're reporting, they're doing the right things, and they're easy to find.


And the reason ICE is terrorizing college students and other people besides, obviously, the politics is they're easy to find. They're not criminals. They're not hiding.


They're not. They're not. You can track them easily and swarm them on the street because they're not doing sketchy things.


They're going to class and going home. And so, like, I just think it's really important that we highlight the stupidity of how all of this gets talked about and how all of it is implemented, because it isn't some sort of, you know, the thing that they want us to believe is that they're just masterminds of this, that they're just these masterminds of evil, but they want us to think that they're masterminds of evil. Right? Like, they can just.


But that's not the reality. They're lazy and they're not that bright and they're not. And they're not doing anything creative.


They're finding people because they want to hit quotas that they can easily find. Who is easily findable? Moms, people with stable jobs, people with stable housing. Right.


Those are the people because they. Because they're hitting quotas. Right.


It's just a really simple one plus one plus one. And I think it's important that we get that, that that's why the Trump administration changed those rules, so that it could go, apparently, like you said, was the first thing they did. They changed the thing that it was obvious they were going to change, but said that they want to change, which is they're going to make it so that they can get anybody, regardless of how long you've been here, regardless of what you've done, regardless if you've paid taxes for 30 years, which almost all of these people have, right? And I think to the folks who say, “I don't mind immigration, but people should do it the right way,” and I think a lot of people say that, and maybe they're not hateful people.


Maybe they think that's a decent argument, right? “I did it the right way. My parents did it the right way. We waited in line.


We got it. These people are just breaking the rules, and that's not fair.” Say that to the person who was fleeing violence, turned themselves in at the border, asked for asylum, got the paperwork, is waiting on their asylum case, and gets picked up and deported.


Because that happens. People like you say it's the people who have been reporting and telling ICE where they live. People doing it the right way.


Yeah, people. People who did it the right way are being deported. The thing that people say.


So thinking about what the state and what cities, what can our state and city do about these things? Right? So I think there's more to do than people might even think about. This is a federal issue, obviously, and what we need is comprehensive immigration reform that is humane and worthy of our values. That's not going to happen today or anytime soon.


But one of the things that I think people need to understand is that ICE cannot do all this work by itself. It relies on state and local collaboration, and that collaboration is 100% voluntary. We cannot be coerced into giving our own state resources, our time, our officials, into helping this machine.


And if you don't agree with the immigration machine right now, with the deportation machine, you can absolutely tell your lawmakers in multiple ways that you do not want our state resources to be tied up into this, because that is our right to do. And so, for example, everything from a municipal Trust Act like Boston has, you know, Michelle Wu got a lot of flak about and held her own in Congress, to our state legislature passing good policies to make sure that we don't rent our bed spaces to ICE, that we don't have collaboration agreements, that we don't do things to collaborate at the state level, all of that can happen. And then also very locally, like if you work at a hospital, if you work at a school, if you work at a place that serves vulnerable people who are vulnerable to deportation.


You know, make sure that you have good protocols in place so that you don't inadvertently help them get deported by, like, sharing information or other protocols that would put them at risk. So you talked a little bit about some of the collaboration agreements. I can ask you explain what are they, where do they exist in Massachusetts, or who's trying to bring them back where they don't exist. And so there's formal agreements and there's informal collaboration as well. I'll start with the formal agreements because those are sort of just clear-cut.


And the ACLU and others are pushing a bill called Dignity Not Deportations that would end two kinds of agreements. The first one is the bed space. You know, in order to do mass deportations, they need to hold them in local jails.


You know, I mean, there's hundreds of facilities around the country, and many of them are just like county jails. There is one contract in Massachusetts, that's Plymouth County Jail, and there are many all over New England.


And more and more popping up. There's like one or maybe two new ones in New Hampshire that are providing additional.


These are just force multipliers. Right? Like, without these beds, they can't do mass deportations. And the more beds you have, you know, if you build it, they will fill it.


That's what the potential watch network says. The more beds that are available, the more enforcement they can do. So we have one in Massachusetts, many in the region, and we don't want anymore.


We do not want any more beds in Massachusetts or anywhere else, because it's just a force multiplier. The other kind of like actual formal contract is called a 287 agreement. That just is the title of the law.


It's the Immigration and Naturalization Act to section 287(g). But that can take many different forms. And that is when you actually take a local person and deputize them with federal powers.


And so currently there's a very small contract in Massachusetts, and that's at the Department of Corrections, where we believe it's one staff person who has these immigration powers to sort of facilitate a person who is in state prison being sent to ICE after they wrap up their sentence. But ICE is looking to sign these all over the country. They are just really going after states and localities to sign these agreements which turn their local cops into ICE agents.


You train them, you give them the powers. They still get a salary from the local government like the federal government does. Not pay a penny.


They get all this work for free. And they're turning local police into ICE agents. And we've seen the New Hampshire State Police recently signed up for this.


So I don't know how many state police troopers in New Hampshire are now ICE agents. And they are doing this so quickly that ICE actually updates its website twice a day with the new agreements that are being processed. We don't have any of those local agreements in Massachusetts and we do not want them.


They are so harmful to the community. I mean, can you imagine you pulled over, or you call 911, and the police officer that you're talking to is also working for ICE officially on their books.


I mean, it's very harmful for communities on many levels. Right. Not just as a force multiplier for ICE, but just breaking down trust in local officials.


Yeah. I mean, there was a good article in NPR this past, I guess it was a few Sundays ago where they interviewed local police officers. And the article says police say ICE tactics are eroding public trust and local law enforcement.


And they talked to law enforcement officials across the country who've all said that their ability to prosecute rapists, prosecute people who actually committed crimes is much harder than it used to be if this was not happening. People who. There's one case I talked about where somebody had come forward, was going to do and then was not going to show up to trial because they are too scared.


So, like, it's not sort of a lot of times, you know, they make it sound like these are just like, oh, like this might happen once or twice, this is happening again. Because if you live at the margins, if you live in poverty, if you live around things, you are also the people who likely have some sort of immigration status that can be easily revoked or something else. Right.


Like, if you think about where I live in Worcester, we have a large immigrant community. There are many people here with many different immigration statuses in my neighborhood, like myself, some of us were born here, some of us have immigrated here, some of us are refugees, some of us sort of maybe don't have quite the right documentation.


Whatever it is that's happening in my street. I live in the eighth poorest district in Massachusetts, eighth poorest zip code. And we have plenty of crime.


And if no one ever talks to the police, like that's where it's happening. Right. Like this is, this is the epicenter of those things.


So I think it’s important to note that. But the other thing I want to note about that, that I think gets missed in all of that is that one of the things there was this great report that came out in Massachusetts that interviewed landlords for undocumented folks.


And it was a project where they interviewed landlords. It's a great project. It's got like 100 pages.


You can read all of their interviews, all the recommendations. And you know, and it certainly marries my experience, which was that people with undocumented status are actually great citizens because they don't want to get into trouble. They're already feeling precarious in their situation.


And so actually if you want lawfulness, the people you often turn to are people who are at the margins. Those are actually the people. They're not the criminals.


They're the people who are most likely to want to chip in to keep things sane, to keep things calm, to keep things away from the violence that they often themselves fled. Right. And so it's just a good reminder again, the way in which the media just allows this parroting of things that are racist and fear-based and xenophobic, but aren't bound in the realities, which is that people who come here want to be here, they want to live good lives and they want opportunity.


And so I just think it's really important that there's not, it's not an accident that we're seeing this overlap between local police complaining and the sort of reduction of these things and the attacks up by ICE. Right.


Like in the reduction of people reporting. It's known. It was of course known.


And that's why it's a bad idea. Right. Laura, if you could give the people listening to this call, if there was one thing that you could ask them, one thing that they should ask of our governor here in Massachusetts.


1. Or as somebody who tells people they should bother all their legislators as many times, like all the time and ask your set of asks for their state legislators and then the asker set of asks for their local elected officials. What would you tell them that they should do? I think legislators have several bills on the table right now, including Dignity Not Deportations, the Safe Communities Act, and a bill about providing funding for lawyers for people who are being deported.


I think those three things are crucial and that they should pass this year as soon as possible. So we should contact our legislators to talk about all three bills. The governor should absolutely support those bills.


And you know, we know that the governor is, is, you know, supportive of immigrants. She can absolutely come forth and you know, be a lot more vocal about the legislative bills that are currently pending. So that.


That's a big ask. Yeah, that's awesome. And the one thing I would say with that, that, like, part of me is always a skeptic of the Legislature.


And then part of me, the part that is hopeful is we've seen the Legislature that has for many years. I remember years ago back, I think this must have been in like 2018 when Representative Denise Provo, used to represent Somerville, had noted that during her years of the Legislature that the Legislature had never once taken a vote to affirmatively increase protections for the rights of the immigrant community. That the legislature could be counted on, for the most part, to vote no on efforts to take away rights, but that they've never done anything affirmatively to strengthen them. However, we have seen with things like the Work and Family Mobility Act, known as the driver's license bill.


And I'm going to shout out to all of the great work that you did on that likewise, as well as with kind of extending kind of in-state tuition to undocumented students last session, that I feel like that there's been a thong of that, like long-standing hostility in the Legislature, kind of a reticence to touch issues in this space. And then I like the combination of that thong and the crisis situation that the Trump administration is creating. I'm hoping makes kind of gives the spark for them to actually realize that now is the time to pass policies they should have passed a decade ago.


It's the time. It's time. It's.


It's time. Let's do it now. And I'm definitely heartened by the response to the 2025 Project that we just saw come out of the Legislature.


Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's at the very least make sure that we're not collaborating and helping, helping cause harm, helping tear our families apart here in Massachusetts.


That's the very least that we can do. Yeah. Well, let's wrap up.


I guess the last thing I will also pitch for is to also pass the bill banning tracking, which is both. It's an ACLU priority and also overlaps with the work on. Which is also another place that they're attacking, on reproductive justice and reproductive rights and the rights to get an abortion as healthcare.


So I think also. But also there's, you know, ICE can use that information as well. So there's another important legislation.


Any final thoughts? Yeah, no, just as a quick thing to just tag in on that with the Location Shield Act and shout out to Day Silly for the great work on that. That's been on my mind as we see all of these different protests and rallies. And it's like when you arrive and leave a rally and do you know who doesn't need to know that? Elon Musk or somebody else who wants to buy your own location data that we are all better, that privacy rights are essential to just general safety.


Yes. And I think we're in a moment where it's imperative on all of us to take action. We cannot sit back.


But I'm also so heartened to see the response of people out on the streets. Like, we're going to keep, I think has filed 26 lawsuits in the past two months. We're going to keep doing that.


But I'm also so heartened by how many people are out on the streets. How many people are, they're making the calls to Congress and to legislators. And you know, even though we're in Massachusetts, don't sit back and think, “our congressional delegation is great and everybody's great.


They don't need to hear from me.” They need to hear from you. But we're seeing people come out and people come out to volunteer. The Lucy hotline is up and running with a ton of volunteers.


We've had a massive influx as well. People are out getting activated and I think we're going to do this together. Well, I will close up shop with two, so a couple of pitches.


One is per the last podcast and this podcast, please consider donating or being supportive of the LUCE Hotline. Again, we have seen that ICE has ramped up things that are, that, you know, it's trying to push its own boundaries. It can only do so if it doesn't do so when people are around, it doesn't do so in the light of day.


The more that we ensure that they are following the letter of the law to the letter of the law, the safer it is for our communities. So please get involved in those processes. I would be remiss as a card-carrying member of the ACLU to not encourage you to also become a card-carrying member of the ACLU.


It is really important work. There's lots of great work. Definitely also give to progressive Mass.


What Jonathan is here and the last I'll say really quickly is if you can, once he was done giving to all those really worthy causes, please do consider donating to Incorruptible Massachusetts. I think Anna said we are one or two monthly donors away from being self-sustaining. And self-sustaining means we don't pay Jonathan, we don't pay Jordan, we don't pay Anna.


We pay young people to help make sure this podcast goes up to do all the background work. And we want to pay them well, pay them a good wage. We can only do that if you also consider donating to this project where we have deep dives on conversation, conversations that otherwise get maybe a paragraph, maybe a short strip, maybe a 30-second spotlight.


But we really want to dive deeper into these issues and we can only do so with your support. So there's lots of great ways to donate, lots of great ways to get involved. And thanks everyone for being here.


Awesome. Thank you so much. Laura, any final words? Thank you.


Now, thank you so much for covering this. As always, it's great talking to you back. Awesome.


Well, thank you so much. Hey there. Thanks so much for watching us on YouTube.


Please like and subscribe, and it would be amazing if you would also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast player. Just look for Incorruptible Massachusetts wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much.