‘Game on’: Congressional oversight committee drops video ahead of sanctuary hearing featuring Boston
The Congressional committee that will question sanctuary city leaders next week about how their policies impact public safety has dropped a promotional video, declaring ‘Game on.’
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a dramatic, nearly three-minute video on Wednesday featuring segments from each of the four cities that will be represented in Washington next week: Boston, New York City, Denver and Chicago.
Boston is the first city to appear in the video, with footage of homeless encampments along Southampton Street, near the intersection of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue, and another of City Hall.
“Pushback in the sanctuary city of Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu says the city will not cooperate with his plan for mass deportations,” a newscaster states as a Herald headline from last November appears about Wu’s resistance to Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown.
“Police agents in Massachusetts arresting two illegal immigrants facing sex crimes against children in two separate instances,” Fox News commentator Dana Perrino states in a clip.
The two illegal immigrants Perrino was referring to – a Salvadoran national charged with 11 charges of sex crimes against a child and another Salvadoran national charged with numerous sex crimes against a child – were arrested by federal agents in Nantucket last September.
The last clip in the Boston segment is footage that Fox News captured of federal agents arresting an illegal Haitian gang member who had been convicted of at least 17 previous crimes, just days into the new Trump administration. “I ain’t going back to Haiti,” the gang member shouts. “(expletive) Trump! You feel me? Yo, Biden forever, bro! Thank Obama for everything he did for me, bro!”
U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the GOP-controlled oversight committee, highlights the purpose of the hearing at the end of the video.
“We are going to bring the mayors in, we are going to let them explain what their policies are,” Comer says, “see if they can answer some questions as to who’s paying for this, who’s been in charge of this, what role their local government has played with the federal government involved.”
“If they are going to continue to disobey the law,” he adds, “then I think we should cut as much of their federal funding as we can cut.”
Wu sat down with religious leaders Tuesday for a conversation the mayor said was intended to inform the testimony she will provide in the hearing next Wednesday.
Boston is a sanctuary city under the Trust Act, a 2014 city law prohibiting police and other departments from cooperating with federal agencies on civil detainers.
“I am hearing a lot of fear in the community,” Wu said. “I’m hearing the tangible impacts about a lot of the policies and what is accurate, what is inaccurate, all kind of swirling around.”
