City Council - Civil Rights, Racial Equity, and Immigrant Advancement Committee Hearing on Docket #0409

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Good afternoon. Could we have all the panelists for the first panel? Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Minyard Culpepper, District 7 City Councilor, and I'm chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Civil Rights, Racial Equity, and Immigrant Advancement. Today is June 4th, 2026 and the exact time is 2.14 p.m. The hearing has been recorded. is also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city council TV.

Broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, Bios Channel 964. Interpretation will be available today in Spanish. For those attending in person, interpretation headsets are available to the right near the podium. Public testimony will be taken at the end of the hearing. Individuals will be called and the order in which they have signed up will have two minutes to testify. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.civilrights at boston.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all counselors. If you're interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance of the chamber.

If you're looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison Megan Kavanagh at megan.kavanagh at boston.gov for the link and your name will be added to the list. If you need interpretation services to testify, Please sign up at the sign-up sheet by the front of the chamber and check the box for Spanish interpretation. If you have any questions, please see the interpreter who will be near the signing sheet. Today's hearing is on docket number 0409, order for a hearing on civil rights, constitutional, and legal implications of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center otherwise known as Brick, the Social Violence Information System, AVIS, the Automated License Plate Readers, ALPR,

and participation in the federal joint task forces. This matter was sponsored by Councilor Julia Mejia, Henry Santana, Minyard Culpepper, and was referred to the committee on February 25th 2026. Before we begin, I'd like to remind my council colleagues and our panelists to please speak so that you can be heard and to ensure the interpreters can properly convey your remarks. Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councilor Flynn, Councilor Worrell, Santana, and Councilor Pepén.

Good afternoon everyone. I want to thank my colleagues for being here, especially my Vice Chair, Mejia, who filed this hearing order, and for her work on these issues as well as Councilor Santana for co-sponsoring this hearing order and for his work on these issues. I want to thank the panelists. and members of the public for joining us for this important hearing. The purpose of today's hearing is not to debate whether public safety matters. Public safety absolutely does matter. The question before us is how we balance legitimate public safety objectives with the constitutional rights, the civil liberties, and due process protections that every Boston resident is entitled to

under the United States Constitution and the Massachusetts Constitution. As technology has evolved, so too has the ability of government to collect, store, analyze, and share information. Systems such as the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, the Associative Violence Information System, the Automated License Place Readers, and information sharing partnerships with federal agencies provide law enforcement with unprecedented access to data and surveillance capabilities. But with those capabilities comes an equally important responsibility to assure transparency, accountability, oversight, and respect for civil rights. Today's discussion is ultimately about public trust.

Residents deserve to know how these systems operate, what protections exist against errors and abuse, and what mechanisms are in place to ensure that individuals are not improperly labeled, not improperly monitored, or subjected to government scrutiny without appropriate safeguards. Councilor, you will have five minutes for open remarks. And with that, Councilor Mejia, you have the floor.

All right, so good afternoon, everyone. And for the record, we don't usually get five minutes for an opening remarks. So I hope my colleagues don't think we're getting five minutes. We're getting a minute to speak, because we're here ready to listen to people, just so you know. I want to thank you, Councillor Culpepper, for hosting today's hearing on Docket 0409, which was filed by my office to examine civil rights and civil liberties. Implications of the Boston Intelligence and Surveillance Infrastructure. As many people know, our office has been clear about our concerns regarding BRIC and the expansion of surveillance technologies. We've worked alongside organizations including Digital Fourth, the Muslim Justice League, the ACLU of Massachusetts, Old Dykes, and many others who have consistently raised concerns about transparency, accountability, and the impact these systems have had on our communities.

With the recent announcement of 13.47 million and UIC funding for the Metro Boston region. We know discussions about future investments in intelligence and surveillance infrastructure will continue. While that funding has not yet formally come before the council, we want to hold this hearing now and lead with community voices and advocates, researchers, and those who are most impacted so that we have a better understanding before the funding decisions are in front of us. This hearing is an opportunity to better understand BRIC, its impact on our communities, and what oversight and accountability should look like moving forward. I look forward to today's hearing and learning from the experts who are living the realities and are doing the work. and I want to thank them for their expertise.

And I also just want to acknowledge that, you know, I've been one of the loudest voices here on the Boston City Council. I've been talking about abolishing brick since the moment I stepped into this chamber. and so I think it's important and every time we've had any of the funding that I believe are harmful to communities particularly low-income black and brown you know vulnerable communities I am always the first to say no. And so I think it's important to have this hearing because we don't know what we don't know. And this gives us an opportunity to hear directly from folks who have been doing this work and living these realities to making sure that we are making informed decisions. And data, you can't deny the data. The data will speak for itself. And my hope is that the lived experiences of those that are here to testify Open up your hearts and minds to the realities of what we're facing here today.

And lastly, I will just say is, you know, I was raised here in the city of Boston. My mom was undocumented for a period of time. We know that a lot of people are living in fear now and people are utilizing tools and technology to really put more fear in communities who are most vulnerable. I just want you to know I haven't even seen the grant and I'm already a hard no. So just putting it on the record. So thank you, Councilor Culpepper.

Councilor Santana. And I have five minutes for your opening statement.

I don't think I'll need five minutes, but good afternoon. Thank you, Chair Culpepper. Thank you to the lead sponsor, Councilor Mejia, for bringing this forward. I'm looking forward to the conversation and hearing from our panelists today. I'm someone that was born in the Dominican Republic, went through the immigration process here in the city of Boston, also grew up in public housing and seen I think a lot of different harms across in my communities. I think some of the questions that I'll have is that, you know, I think Rick, as the chair of public safety, I've been the one overseeing when the grant comes over to the council. Last year, the city of Boston, I believe, didn't apply for the grant itself, so we didn't take a vote on it last year. The grant as a whole covers a lot of different areas.

And I know that over the last two years as chair of public safety, I know many of my colleagues have come and have asked me Are there ways to be able to separate the grant, right? To be able to pass some of the things that we need and I think be able to talk more about some of the areas where I think people have concerns It's my understanding from that research that I've been able to do is that it comes together for that same reason that they want you to do all of it. Those are the conversations that we've had in our committee. Looking forward again to hearing from our panelists. I am going to have to step out early, but I really appreciate you all being here. Also, both hearings today, the chamber has been packed. Really appreciate community being out here on a Thursday afternoon. So thank you so much for being here and being present. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilor. Flynn, you have five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for bringing us together today. Thank you to Councilor Mejia. and to Councilor Santana and Councilor Pepén as well for their important work in this field as well. I know that there has been some debate recently On this federal grant, even going back several years when I was a city council president, we actually received the grant from a Democratic president that was sent to the state of Massachusetts and then to Boston. I have visited the BRIC several times and want to encourage City Council colleagues to also visit if they haven't done so. We passed the grant in 2025.

In December 2024, the City Council accepted a grant for nearly $12 million from the Department of Homeland Security for regional cooperation preparedness in high-threat areas. This also supports surrounding cities and towns as well. It's about the cooperation Boston provides as a leader, but it's also supporting other cities and towns. I believe we have a responsibility to put the public safety of our residents first and working closely, as I mentioned, with cities and towns throughout Greater Boston. While I understand concerns raised Thank you very much. The World Cup and other major events.

But I also know, as my colleagues have highlighted, that we have to factor in civil rights, transparency, accountability, Civil Rights, and I'm willing to listen and to learn more from my colleagues and from the public as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councillor Flynn.

Councillor Pepén, you have five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the co-sponsors for bringing this to the chamber here today, and thank you to our panelists for being here and for providing your expertise and work on this related topic. I do have prepared remarks, so I'll just read that. The purpose of this hearing is not to undermine public safety, nor is it to diminish the important work of law enforcement officers perform every day to keep our community safe. We can recognize that Boston, like many other major cities, faces real threats, and intelligence gathering can be an important tool in preventing violence, protecting critical infrastructure, and responding to emergencies. At the same time, public safety and civil liberties are not competing values. In fact, they are deeply connected. The trust between residents and government institutions is one of the strongest foundations of a safe and thriving city. Many residents have raised concerns about the break. particularly regarding transparency, oversight, data collection, information sharing, and the potential for misuse.

These concerns are amplified especially during a time when Americans are questioning how government at all levels are collected, stored, and utilized personal information. People want assurance that those tools intend to keep them safe and not being used in ways that are infringed upon their privacy, chill-free speech, or disproportionately impact certain communities. And I see that our responsibility as policymakers here in the City Council is to strike the right balance. We can support efforts to keep our city safe while also demanding transparency, accountability, and respect for individual rights. Boston should never be forced Thank you, Councilor Pepén.

Now I'd like to introduce today's first panel. And panelists, you will have seven minutes for your opening statements. First panelist is Brenda McQuaid. Fatima Ahmed, Heather Arroyo, and Maya Schaefer. Brenda, we'll start with you. Brenda is associate professor, author of Pacifying the Homeland, Intelligence Fusion, and Mass Supervision, and she's from the United University of Southern Maine. You have seven minutes.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Councillors, for this opportunity to speak with you all. So I've researched fusion centers for 15 years and I'm the author of the only academic book on the subject. A report I co-authored on Maine's fusion center helped pass a bill mandating audits by the state's Attorney General. And I've been working with the Muslim Justice League since the fall of 2022 on a comprehensive report on the BRIC. So Bostonians hear a lot about the gang database. It's important, but it's just one piece of a much larger police machine. So the BRIC is one of 80 DHS recognized fusion centers. and it's among the largest and most well-funded. It has 50 personnel, including sworn officers, civilian analysts and embedded federal liaisons. It receives between two and eight million annually

through the Urban Area Security Initiative, plus hundreds of thousands more in state and DOG grants. Its largest contract, $4 million with Sentra Technology, is the biggest in the BPD's entire budget. The brick was sold as a counterterrorism hub, but in our report, we call it a spy center. We use that term because the BRICS purpose is political, using surveillance to manage marginalized populations, monitor dissent, and fabricate threats to justify perpetual security. It's not about counterterrorism or crime control. It is about social control, using the police and the criminal legal system to govern, displacing more humane and equitable policy options. So what does this look like? A real-time crime center managing thousands of cameras. 1,400 from BPD.

At least 750 in the camera information management system. 2200 Boston Housing Authority cameras. 625 Boston Public Health Commission cameras. 45 automated license plate readers feeding data into Flock Security's for-profit network. Contracts with data brokers like LexisNexis Accurate which provide access to expansive public records databases and mobile phone data sets. that let police reconstruct your movements, your associations, and your private life without a warrant, bypassing the Fourth Amendment by purchasing your data instead of proving probable cause to a judge. All of this flows to CrimeView, where analysts map, sort, and flag individuals in real time. The BRIC distributes intelligence products to over 1,500 registered users.

Police, private security, hospitals, universities, utility companies, and corporate partners. The goal is not solving crimes. It's rendering the social world legible and governable. The foundational act of politics is naming the enemy, and the BRIC has fabricated a list of them. So first, the spurious adversary, the criminal. In 2022, my coauthors and I published an analysis of hacked brick intelligence products in a peer-reviewed academic journal. We found that 84% of the BRICS documents were crime blotters, descriptive reports with no analysis, A catalog of the desperate violence of the powerless, property crime, drug use, interpersonal violence. This is routine policing dressed up as intelligence, but I think it's better understood as social control disguised as Public Safety.

This is criminalization crowding out care, a security solution to problems requiring housing, healthcare, and jobs. Second, the illusory adversaries, the dissident and the terrorist. The BRIC treats political dissent as a security risk. It tracks and monitors protesters. It frames organizing and political speech as potential terrorism. So first, Occupy Wall Street. The brick warned that the movement could, quote, attract individuals intent on committing acts of violence and domestic terrorism. That never materialized. What did was police in riot gear sweeping Dewey Square at midnight. Second, Black Lives Matter. After the 2020 uprisings, the BRIC produced a bulletin focusing on the alleged violence against police while erasing evidence of police misconduct. Over 93% of BLM protests were peaceful.

In Boston, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets first. The BRICS Bulletin did not reflect that reality. It manufactured a narrative where protesters were a threat and the police were victims. And finally, the Palestine Solidarity Movement. After October 7, the BRIC warned that the conflict could, quote, mobilize homegrown violent extremists, while acknowledging that, quote, no specific or credible acknowledging no specific or credible threats to the region. So this is a pattern. The BRIC regularly produces Homeland Security bulletins that report on violence abroad, such as a drone attack in Saudi Arabia, a knife attack in Paris, And then, with no connection to Boston, end with the same refrain. No evidence of a local threat, but remain vigilant. So this is not intelligence.

This is what we call threat fabrication, the manufacturing of perpetual danger to justify surveillance and political speech. So in the federal intelligence community, fusion centers do not have a good reputation. They are known for low-quality work. Their products are often dismissed as intelligence spam, and this is the reason why, right? This is not... Good intelligence analysis. This is fearmongering. So the BRIC is not a crime-fighting tool in need of reform. It is a social control apparatus that fabricates, that operates in secret and fabricates threats. Every dollar spent on the brick is a dollar not spent on housing, mental health, or youth programs. Every reform short of abolition legitimizes a system that targets our most vulnerable neighbors. The BRIC is a spy center and it should be closed. Thank you for your time and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. I'm Fatima, and I'm executive director of Muslim Justice League. I just want to start by saying, you know,

We have seven minutes.

Okay, great.

The counselors had five.

Yeah, we all thought we had five, so seven is wonderful. Great, thank you. I want to start by saying that the issues that we're talking about today, which I know we've been talking about for many years now, have only grown, the concerns have only grown Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Don't take my time with clapping. Very sure that there will be additional cities and towns considering pulling out of BRIC in the near future. And the UAC grant, which Boston did in fact apply for, despite the new requirements from DHS to engage and many more. The fact that the grant has been delayed in border enforcement and election security is one of the reasons that people are Grant later.

But there are just dozens of reasons that people are considering pulling out of BRIC and why Boston should truly abolish BRIC. We're going to start with the counterterrorism piece, which, as Brendan laid out, the majority of BRIC 30 of the 50 staff are focused on counterterrorism, but really what they are doing is reporting surveilling and reporting on constitutionally protected activities including that of my own organization many other social justice organizations and as we've said before That included a report on former Mayor Marty Walsh when he spoke at Occupy. That included a social media post on Facebook from former Councilor Tito Jackson when he talked about Black Lives Matter. So we're talking about not just many Boston residents, but people throughout the region. who are swept up in BRICS surveillance under the guise of counterterrorism. And we're not even talking about protests.

We're talking about social media posts. We're talking about everything from It's regular events that are happening that are going out in reports that are also talking about violence around the world and then listing local events from Jewish groups from Muslim groups from everyone under the sun and these are going out as intelligence reports not just to law enforcement but to private agencies. Nonprofits, hospitals, everyone is getting them. You all might remember the scare around Snowport. And that was because of BRIC intelligence going out and scaring people to think that something much bigger was going to happen when it was just a protest. Now, a new report just came out from the Brennan Center at NYU Law just within the past week.

So they're not here today, but I'm going to read some of their key findings. The Brennan Center engaged and quite a long lawsuit with the Boston Police Department and BRIC about their social media surveillance. So here are the key findings from the Brennan Center, this respected legal institution. Analysts use online aliases to monitor social media often without documentation. An individual promoting an event online can be enough to draw police surveillance. Monitoring of public events relies largely on analyst discretion. As I said, that's vigils, you know, for ceasefires, film screenings. The brick engaged in over collection and broad circulation of information with no clear public safety value. Information sharing is widespread but poorly tracked.

The Boston Police Department engaged in unregulated social media collection targeting minors, their networks, and witnesses to violence. And as you all know, BPD and BRIC relied on quote unquote exigent circumstances to bypass your permission to procure social media monitoring just within the past year. I will say they also have lumped many databases, dozens of databases and technologies together Thank you. Thank you. that are shared with other law enforcement. This body did not have to approve BPD buying dozens of flock license plate readers, putting them up

And now they've paused them, but if you don't know, that is part of a new BRIC license plate reader regional network That includes Quincy having, I think, about 60 license plate readers, Revere, Winthrop, and other cities within BRIC. So they are doing all of that without coming to you all. The other part of this is the federal information sharing. So I want to be clear, BRIC and all fusion centers were set up by the Department of Homeland Security, established by DHS for the express purpose of information sharing with federal law enforcement. No one should be surprised that today that is still happening. DHS's current agenda is to deport as many people as possible.

And they get to do that because they established this and they made us dependent on their money for real emergency management funding. through the Fusion Center. You can't get the UASI grant without funding BRIC, and that is intentional to make us dependent on it so that they can have our information. You all know that a DHS agent and an FBI agent sit in BRIC. So every time Brick tells you those agents cannot access the gang database, they mean they don't have their own login. But I hope we are not foolish enough to think those agents just sit there twiddling their thumbs every day. They have not told you what those agents are doing. And you know and you will hear from multiple people that information keeps getting to us. I don't know how we can be surprised when those agents are sitting there. In addition, there's overlap with other federal task forces.

Agent Andy Creed, who is a Boston police officer in BRIC, is also part of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. And through the MOUs that you all, I'm so glad that you subpoenaed that, that you used 17F to get those MOUs, it says, When you are deputized under the JTTF, the FBI, that agent, that officer, is acting as an FBI agent. and he sits within brick. That exponentially expands how much power and information he has. and we're still part of an ICE HSI task force. So there are some Boston police officer, I don't know which one, who is deputized as a border agent. If you read the documents, the MOUs that you all just produced, It is clear that officer acts as part of border enforcement, as part of that task force. So we know through that overlap and through BRIC

Information sharing keeps happening. The Brennan Center is telling you that. All of these wonderful lawyers and immigrants who are directly impacted are going to keep telling you information is getting out. The only way to stop that from happening is to not collect the information to begin with and to abolish BRIC. Thank you.

Thank you. Heather Arroyo.

Thank you so much to the chair for having this hearing and having us here today, and also to Councilor Mejia for your leadership on this issue. My name is Heather Perez-Arroyo, and I'm a senior immigration attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. I am also a resident of Jamaica Plain. My expertise is in removal defense and I have represented individuals who are unjustly detained by ICE since the first Trump administration at the Pear Project and also as a professor at Boston College Law School. Most recently, I also served as counsel in Sileri Doe v. DHS, a nationwide class action where we successfully challenged the unlawful de-documentation of nearly one million immigrants from Venezuela, Haiti, and all over the world. In my role at MLRI, I also coordinate a statewide immigration coalition made up of nonprofit legal services providers and community-based organizations who defend and represent low-income immigrants throughout New England.

I'm here to explain the legal landscape and environment in which we are doing our work as immigration attorneys. Since taking office in 2025, the Trump administration has executed a mass deportation campaign that puts Every non-citizen at risk of arrest. Federal agencies have been refitted and repurposed for immigration enforcement. USCIS, the very agency that the entire purpose is to adjudicate immigration benefits, is now acting as an arm of immigration enforcement. They're implementing a scheme to de-document, delay, and deny. So the purpose is to strip individuals of the lawful status that they currently have to never adjudicate an application for that status or to outright deny applications so that people are left vulnerable to arrest and detention.

They've forced agencies that have absolutely nothing to do with immigration to share information in order to locate non-citizens to arrest them regardless of whether they actually have a basis, a lawful basis, to make an arrest or not. Once arrested, they disappear them and then lock these immigrants up indefinitely. In late April of 2025, Mass Law Reform launched the habeas project, The first of its kind to help facilitate access to the federal courts to challenge those unlawful detentions. Habeas cases are overwhelmingly successful in federal court. It's because What the government is doing, what DHS is doing, is blatantly unlawful. So judge after judge is coming to the same conclusion that that is an unlawful detention. Yet they still continue to arrest individuals without adjudicating any purpose as to why that person could lawfully be arrested and detained.

It's gotten to the point that the government submits a form response acknowledging that the court has already ruled on the issue in prior cases and requests that the court decide the case with no oral argument. The individual ends up getting released, but that's after they've been traumatized by the arrest, being shackled, being taken to an unknown location, jailed for sometimes weeks on end before a judge determines that they never had the right to do that. Hundreds of judges across the nation, including appointments from every president since Ronald Reagan, have ruled in favor of unlawfully detained immigrants, ordering their release or that an immigration conduct a bond hearing. Detained immigrants have filed over and many more. We have received 46,000 habeas petitions since January of 2025 and which overwhelmingly have resulted in the release from illegal detention. and ask questions later continues.

They have not changed their behavior despite their behavior being deemed unlawful over and over again. Instead, the lawless Department of Homeland Security is saying that they get to determine whether their own actions are unlawful or not. Just two days ago, the Homeland Security Secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, repeatedly refused to commit to following court orders. From judges who ruled that the Department of Homeland Security has acted illegally He is suggesting that they get to decide if they're going to file that court order or not, depending on how they view that judge. We cannot trust the Department of Homeland Security with the information that the BRIC collects. The BRIC is directly fueling the mass deportation machine. There's no check on the other end that would ensure that their constitutional rights are protected.

Most often, when someone is arrested and detained, they are quickly shackled, put in a transfer van and driven out of the state to prevent them from being able to access counsel and to challenge their unlawful detention. This is just one of the many tactics employed to interfere with due process. and even when someone is able to get before a judge, those orders are not always followed and the rights continue to be violated when the entire Department of Homeland Security decides whether they They make themselves the decision maker and decide whether their behavior is constitutional or not. We continue to see the information that the BRIC collects, like old juvenile records and FIOs, being used against clients to facilitate their deportations. Clients who have had incidents that are supposed to be confidential that never amount to charges are disseminated through BRIC to DHS. In 2015,

A client who had a single FIO from being in a public place with an alleged gang member was detained and only released on bond of $15,000. No criminal history and with significant positive equities, it still was determined that $15,000 was needed to ensure that that person showed up to court, right? And so in the landscape today, that individual may not have been even afforded the opportunity to seek a bond. And bond is regularly being denied despite a person posing no threat to the community or any flavors. Even outside of immigration court, clients continue to face heightened scrutiny when they travel, consistently being pulled into secondary because of their birth profile, even though they have a lawful immigration status. For these reasons of the lack of accountability or recourse, the City Council should vote against the funding that supports the bread.

Thank you. You have seven minutes.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm an award-winning investigative journalist, and I was targeted by BRIC and had my information shared in live time with law enforcement agencies, both local, regional, and federal. Brig then went on and took my information and put it as part of a presentation at Homeland Security, DHS headquarters. So I was targeted because I am an expert in the transparency laws in Massachusetts and in governmental accountability. This occurred in 2015, this particular The Boston Police knew exactly who they were surveilling. In my time reporting on issues of transparency and accountability, The Boston Police came up multiple times and they were aware of my reporting.

Then Commissioner Evan was asked about it on a radio program. where he denounced some of my reporting. So they knew exactly who I was and exactly what I was doing. And I went to the 2015 Boston Marathon and documented the checkpoints where they were doing warrantless searches of absolutely everyone and the Boston police had put out a list of requested items that people not bring. I went down to see if this was a request, which is the sort of legal gray zone fiction that they were creating, or if this was being enforced as if it was a law, not that there was one backing it. and what I found was, of course, that it was being enforced as if there was a law backing it.

What happened when I arrived at the first checkpoint was I was told that if I invoked my Fourth Amendment rights and refused a search and attempted to enter the area on a public street, I would be arrested. They couldn't figure out what for. At subsequent checkpoint, I was told I wouldn't be arrested, but I wouldn't make it down the street. which I can only assume means if they're not taking me into custody and I'm not making it down the street that they're going to shoot me. At checkpoints after that, they escalated to using physical violence to remove me from the area. Now, I didn't know at the time, but what had happened was the brick had been in live time reporting my actions, my activities, who I was, the name of the outlet that I worked for, and disseminating it to every law enforcement agency present.

brings the scaling threats sort of into a new light where you can already see the negative law enforcement ramifications of having your information passed around. I've lived them. I didn't know about this until months later. When the BRIC had given a presentation at DHS headquarters, and DHS had actually published it, another journalist found it and informed the ACLU, who informed me. I had been named the only, quote, significant event, or sig event, I assume significant, at the 2015 marathon at whatever time they had taken the picture of their heads up display. They had given a presentation on how well they can track somebody in live time, in a crowd, on an actual map. And it was me. So, for me, this is a very real chilling First Amendment, freedom of press, and freedom of speech.

In the wake of this, I slowed down and then stopped my in-person reporting on issues of police misconduct. And in subsequent Trump administrations where I've seen the targeting of journalists like myself, trans people like myself, and critics of government policy like myself, I've had to decide whether or not my reporting was worth potentially losing my life over because both federally or here in Massachusetts, these negative police interactions could lead to being arrested and being You know, imprisoned. And either state or federal, they put me in a men's prison. So for me, that is really not that much different than a death sentence. So I've written more articles, but I haven't published them. This is the impact of BRIC.

Now, I did try to seek redress through the complaint system that BRIC has. They allegedly have a privacy council. I say allegedly because when I made my complaint, for the next six years, my complaint sat open. There was no records that showed that the Privacy Council existed or ever met and my complaint was never taken up somewhere between year six and year seven, my complaint was closed. I was never spoken with by anybody involved. And subsequent records requests found that The only real takeaway that The Brick found, they said that it was unfortunate that their law enforcement partner had posted it and that the ACLU and others had picked it up. That was their takeaway. Nothing about targeting a critic or a journalist.

Nothing about how that might impact community. For example, in that same time span, The UK voted for Brexit and managed to leave the EU. And it took longer for the BRIC to consider a single privacy complaint. There is no redress. And once they share your information, you're in the databases You're in all of them. Everywhere. They can't undo that. So there is no oversight. Information does not stay with the brick. That's not what they were designed to do. They're a war on terror apparatus, and they'll use it against anybody that they see fit, critics and Others. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Hsu. We now have five minutes for questions. We'll begin with Councilor Bahia.

You couldn't hear him?

Mahia will now begin. She has five minutes to raise questions, issues. You have five minutes.

I'm going to take seven because It's just me and you and Pepén here now, so I'm going to take more than that. I got five minutes. How many rounds of questions do we get? No, just joking. All right, so let's just start off. So first of all, thank you And I know that not all of my colleagues are here today, but I want for those who are here in this chamber and also following along virtually is that these get recorded. And so just trust that at some point, whether it's their staff or my council colleagues, they will be reviewing the tape or being encouraged to do so by you all. Make sure you watch the tape. So that's just a little friendly reminder to give a little nudge.

So I guess let me just start off. I have 5,000 questions, but I'm going to start with one page at a time. Fusion Centers were created to address terrorism threats after 9-11. I lived in New York when 9-11 happened, and that was a very traumatic time. And what I noticed, instinctually, even at that time, that it became all about patriotism. And being an immigrant felt really scary at that time, because it felt like there was an underlining attack on us. And I felt that. And so I'm hoping that you can tell us a little bit about, based on your research, how has BRICS mission evolved over time, and how has that expansion occurred with enough public oversight and democratic accountability.

I'm also curious as to what evidence exists that BRIC improves public safety outcomes. We hear that a lot. It's, you know, public safety. Yes, I do believe in public safety, but just curious if you could just talk to us about kind of what evidence exists that brick actually plays a role in public safety as we know it. And how should policymakers weigh those benefits against documented concerns regarding privacy, civil liberties, and mass surveillance? I'm also curious if you could talk to us a little bit about what types of information are collected, analyzed, and retained and shared through BRIC. And what are the most significant transparency gaps Preventing residents and elected officials from understanding those practices. And two more.

How are emerging technologies including AI and social media monitoring Change the scope and risk of intelligence gathering compared to when BRIC was first established. So I'm just curious if you could talk to us a little bit about that evolution. And my fifth question, because I only have five minutes. If the City Council were to establish a robust oversight framework for BRIC, what specific reporting Requirements, Audits, and Performance Metrics and Public Disclosures would you recommend? I know that's a lot, but I have more questions and five minutes.

We might need you to repeat some of them, but I will start with we all agree there is no oversight that fixes this. You have to get rid of brick. You already have plenty of oversight rules auditing that they are supposed to do. It is not going to stop it. They collect all sorts of information. And we don't know, you know, they produce their annual surveillance report to you that claims, you know, here's what we're doing. But as the Brennan Center just found with their social media policies, they're not actually documenting their practices. They're using aliases to engage in social media Surveillance Without Documentation. If I did a public records request for my organization, Muslim Justice League, nothing would come up because in the 600 pages of reports they put out about Palestine events.

They know not to say Muslim Justice League had this event. It says a known organization is having this event. This organization is known for doing X, Y, and Z. They are getting around all of the rules that exist. So I had to read through 600 pages and know all of the Palestine events that happened to be able to say, oh, those are my events. Those are events from Jewish Voice for Peace. It's only because I know and I have too much time to focus on brick that I could figure that out. I don't know where the evidence is of their public safety. you know I think you all have heard from them many times but we have so much evidence of their harms and I just want to say I just really want to highlight how important it is that Maya Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. or two justifiably afraid to be here and I'm so grateful that Maya could be here and I hope you all take seriously how many people are impacted and can't be in front of you to tell you that.

May I hop in on that? We'll come back to you for the second round. Let me move to Councilor Pepén.

I wanted to add something to that.

Thank you. The playing with records and saying that they don't exist is something Burke's been doing at least as long as I've known them. In response to finding out that they had surveilled me, the first thing I did was put in a public records request. to which they said no records exist.

Regarding the question on the BRICS mission, like many fusion centers, The BRIC was created for counterterrorism, but they quickly ran into a problem. Political violence, right, terrorism is an exceedingly remote phenomena. There isn't enough terrorism to justify This massive investment of resources. So the mission became all crimes, all threats, all hazards. So this is a nebulous mission. This is everything under the sun, right? I would ask the BRIC command what their collection requirements are. Why are they collecting information? What we've seen, what the Brennan Center report that Fatima documented, It's the discretion of the analysts. It's discretionary.

There isn't a consistent, coherent agenda for why they monitor what they monitor. And what we see when we look at their reports is there's a clear bias. There's a focus on, you know, you give police fancy surveillance technologies and they're just going to use it. Thank you. Thank you. You know, police solutions to these social problems. One quick thing also on effectiveness of, like, evidence of the BRICS, that the BRIC improves public safety outcomes, right? So let me tell you a secret that every criminologist knows and that the police knows.

We cannot connect police practice to changes in the crime rate, right? What I tell my students in my intro to criminology classroom, right? We had a huge crime drop in the 1990s, right? Crime peaked in the early 90s, then has been consistently trending downward. Why has this happened, right? Huge debate, many contending explanations, right? Boston is sometimes held up, the Boston miracle. Boston had a huge reduction in crime with the original Operation Ceasefire that was You know, essentially an early violence interruption program. New York City also had a huge drop in crime at the same time, but with totally different methods, right? This was Compstat, this was public order policing, this was stop and frisk. Two cities, similar drops in crime, totally different police practices. So what does this tell us?

The police don't have a... We cannot scientifically connect and show that police practice actually causes crime rates to drop. The social world is very complicated. There's many factors that causes crime to rise and fall. What police do is not prevent crime. They intervene after the fact to maintain public order. I know we like to associate police with crime control, but the social science isn't there. It isn't backed up. And what we can say is when we look at other countries with much lower crime rates, what do they have? They have a much more robust social welfare system. So if you want to eliminate crime, meet people's basic needs. That's what the social science shows.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I just want to say that just thank you so much for your testimony, for providing that panel opening statements because it was really eye-opening to a lot of the things that I already knew was happening and just What's happening in our federal government and the mistrust that I already have, honestly, with the Department of Homeland Security and anything that's happening with our presidential administration. I, in a different world, once wanted to be an immigration attorney. and I was very deep into the conversations of what we're having today, which is why even as a city councilor I do talk a lot about immigration rights and making sure we're protecting and standing up for our residents, which is why I've always been very, I question the brick a lot of the practices and making sure that are we doing the right thing here and what I'm hearing is that the lack of trust has only increased obviously since Trump.1 or Trump.2.

And now I think that we are at a place where I want to see a lot of, I want to see the city of Boston not working with the DHS. I want to see us not working with any, collaborating with any federal bureau where we know that if they're not governing right themselves, how can we make sure that they're not impacting our residents here in the city of Boston as well? I don't really have a question for you all because I know what people are going through based on stories that I'm hearing from residents in my own districts. from coalitions that are working, like Rise for everyone, making sure that immigrants feel protected and are not being impacted by stuff. Actually, Councilor Mejia joined me For a work-in session on an evening about, what was that, two months ago now in Rossignol?

To have a conversation like this about how we can protect our residents at a very hyper-local level at a time where nothing is serving, especially with someone like Mark. Mark Wayne McMullin up there who God knows he has no moral backbone. But Fatima, you mentioned something that I am very passionate about and it's you brought up the plate scanners. And the reason why I say I'm passionate about this, not the scanning of the plates, it's about transportation enforcement. and something that I keep hearing from my residents is that they're tired of seeing drivers violate the red lights of the traffic lights or people that violate the bus lanes. This is something that I'm talking about with the ACLU about how do we find the middle ground of if we are going to use potentially camera enforcement like Providence, Rhode Island, and other places do across the country. How do we do it in a way that doesn't violate these people's rights?

Have you or any of the organizations on this panel done any studies about this? Because this is, I'm trying to find the middle ground here where we can make sure people are not running red lights and not breaking laws I have unfortunately killed residents already, but not in a way that it's stored and now they're being vigilized for everything.

Yeah, that's such a good question. It would actually be helpful to have a hearing to get into it because the technology changes so and quickly like Flock as a license plate reader company has suddenly taken over and now has an office in Seaport because they've expanded so rapidly. And with the rise of AI, I will say, personally, it's hard for me to keep track of which technologies we feel comfortable with. But I think part of this is about who has access to those cameras, right? In the past, Councilor Mejia probably remembers this and maybe Councilor Breadon, Livable Streets, Boston Cyclist Union, a bunch of transportation-focused organizations have come here and said, abolish BRIC. Everyone agrees that we have to abolish BRIC and that we want to take traffic enforcement out of

Policing, because policing, the Vera Institute and many other respected institutes will tell you the number one way that black and brown people are racially profiled and come into contact with police is traffic stops. And if we actually find other ways to handle that through like civil processes that are not locking people up and not putting them in front of someone with a gun, not arresting them. This just happened in Brookline. Ice just grabbed someone in Brookline when he came out of the police station, and he had been arrested on a traffic violation, an immigrant man. That is one of the biggest ways that black and brown people come into contact with policing and actually diverting that. to other methods where a transportation department is handling that kind of enforcement would be really helpful.

Thank you so much for that recommendation. I know my time is up. I just want to thank you. for all of you for providing this information. Very helpful as a counselor to just have this at our disposal. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. I've got a few questions. And the first question that I have had to do with the

Knife attack in Paris.

The knife attack in Paris. Why would the BRIC be interested in a knife attack in Paris?

So this is one of the big criticisms of fusion centers in general, right? So intelligence you know analysis is supposed to be like to inform decision makers about emergent threats what people you know across inside the intelligence community you know in the You know, police professionalizers, civil libertarians. Many people criticize fusion centers as not being real intelligence producers. They're information brokers. So what they're doing is chasing headlines, right? There is a, you know, there was knife attacks happening in Paris. This was in the news, right? So the BRIC puts that in their Homeland Security Bulletin and sends it out to every cop in Boston. But there's no connection to Boston. So the question, why are they interested in that?

They're interested in that because they have too many resources invested in a mission that doesn't warrant to them. Political violence is an exceedingly remote phenomenon. So the BRIC has these 30 threat analysts. What are they doing? They're monitoring social movement organizations, and then they're acting as a third-rate news aggregator, and they're sending Local police summaries of political violence abroad and warning them to be vigilant while having their official disclaimer, we have no... connection to we have there's no local nexus we have no information about a local threat but be aware of this right the other thing I would add The most significant instance of political violence in this city, the Boston Marathon bombing. When that happened, what was the consequence? What was the fallout?

It was the FBI, the CIA, and BPD pointing fingers at each other. You know, we had the security apparatus had information on the Tsarnaev brothers, but nobody acted on it. Why is that, right? What was the BRIC doing at that time? They were monitoring Occupy Boston. Right? So my answer to you would be, you know, it's too much resources invested in so-called counterterrorism. And what these officers do is they're looking for threats. to fill up their days and justify their jobs. Thank you.

Could I add something specific?

Sure, absolutely.

The other part of this that is clear from reading all of these reports Brick is not sending out reports to all the hospitals and universities here every time there's a fight in a Southie bar. That knife attack was a Muslim. They think it's more important to send that out because of Islamophobia. And that is very much what created BRIC. That is what justifies what BRIC does every day. So those reports about ceasefire events that were happening here All of those reports start with Al-Qaeda is saying this, ISIS is saying this, And then it will list events from Jewish Voice for Peace Boston, from Muslim Justice League, from students at Harvard who are demanding a ceasefire. So they are actually pairing What they are seeing from these terrorist organizations.

And they are using something called SITE, S-I-T-E, that gives them a feed of what happens with these organizations. That organization site is known for being wildly Islamophobic. And I really hope that you all, the next time the surveillance annual report comes up and they say that they're using the site database, like eliminating that would be Greatly helpful. But yes, they are always going to talk about anything that Muslim folks are doing or black and brown people are doing to justify more policing and scare everybody.

Mayor, let me ask you a question with regard to your situation. What kind of, if any, recourse did you have, or what kind of steps did you take, if any, to try and To try and make what happened to you in the final analysis equitable. Let me try and use it from that perspective.

Sure. Well, for me, what I did was I tried to engage the internal complaint system that BRIC is supposed to have. and that included sort of documenting what I had and putting in the records request trying to make sure that I had everything that they had which they claimed not to have anything and then putting together and many more. It gets into some nitty gritty stuff, like they're supposed to evaluate information before they share it, but if they're sharing it in live time, they're not evaluating it. They're just disseminating it instantly. And their claim eventually that they had destroyed it and immediately afterward the data, despite there still clearly being pictures of it and whatnot that they gave presentations about.

Their reasoning for that was that My data was not valuable. So they shared data that they say wasn't valuable without looking at it, which is a violation of their policy. My complaint went into several different things including the basically false reply to my records requests. And that's as far as an internal thing that I could do. as I could make that complaint. And like I said, for the next six years, it sat open and unaddressed because the Privacy Council was a fiction. There was nobody assigned to it and no meetings that we could find. and then it was just simply closed, having never spoken to me. And their findings, their biggest finding, there was some records that we found. The synopsis, I think, It was, I'll read it.

This is from their own synopsis of their looking into the event. On August 4th, the BRIC presented at the National Geospatial Preparedness Summit in Washington, D.C. The presentation was intended to share GIS mapping-related lessons learned by the BRIC over the last several years in our efforts to provide support to the BPD's special events and critical incidents. Our development of a, quote, common operating picture, end quote, COP, for sharing operational information such as events, incidents in real time. On October 19th, we were advised our presentation was posted on the internet by the hosts of the training conference. We requested that it be removed and destroyed. Our request was honored. Unfortunately, the ACLU and others picked up on it, found it controversial, and brought additional attention to it to Twitter. That was their only takeaway. Really, I had no further recourse. I published about it, and I'm here to talk about it today because you are the folks that could potentially stop this.

This is DHS in your local police. and it's their agenda, not yours, not mine, not ours.

Thank you. I want to acknowledge Councilor Breadon. Councilor Breadon, I've given the Councilor five minutes for questions, but because you're a little late, I'll give you five minutes for your opening statement and your questions. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I think one of our panelists had something to add to your previous question.

Just to add that I and other attorneys have actually been successful in that complaint process and have had clients who have been removed from the gang database and the harm continues, right? The response that you get is, That the client does not appear in the database and that's it right like so you this client is not in brick I've used that evidence in immigration court to say all of that previous evidence that has been submitted and has actually been removed. He's no longer in that database. So you shouldn't rely on that evidence because this isn't reliable evidence. They still used it against him. And so the problem is once you're in, you're in. There's actually no way to remove that past harm. It becomes like a legacy, right? That there's going to be continued access to

Right, sorry, I thought...

Meyer. Thank you so much. Yeah, in my initial few minutes, I tried to say that it's a fiction to say that they can pull this back from other places. Once it's out, it's out.

Right.

What was the procedure you used when you did pursue information that you knew was there that they said wasn't there. What did you then do?

Well, so for many, for our posture is a little bit different because we don't have to guess what's already in there. It's been presented in immigration court against our client, right? So it's a little easier when you already have the information that they're relying on. and you just can submit a complaint and we're thankful that there is a process that exists but the point of it is that unless you have access to all that information up front it's hard to know what's even in there. And second, when you go through the process that they've created, it still doesn't result in a remedy that's going to be effective.

What's that process?

It's essentially just reaching out directly to the BRIC and with a letter saying this is the information and I'm challenging my client's inclusion in the BRIC.

And so did you at any point with any cases pursue it in court?

No, not a court procedure, just directly with the brick, yes.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Breadon?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. I'm sorry for being late. I had another meeting. The concerns I have about the BRIC because it's really about the potential for the federal government to access and, I would say, steal data and using it in ways that can harm our immigrants, our black and brown communities. and then also increasingly concerns about their surveillance of social movements and political activism, non-violent political activism and then also You know, just surveilling people who are exercising the First Amendment right to protest or gather. So that's a big concern of mine. I'm also worried that residents, that the very fact that there is this surveillance that residents will fear

We've had these many, many conversations many times. and that's why the Trust Act is so important and how to be really disciplined about enforcing that and keeping the line between that sort of firewall between Our police department and immigration is really critically important. I was just wondering, what's the explicit legal authority under which BRIC operates and where is the authority defined? Who defines it? and then who provides independent oversight over their data practices and partnerships, if there's any. And once Boston shares information with federal partners, Does the city retain any control over how that data may be used? Those are just a few of my questions.

So the fusion centres operate They were usually founded by an executive order from the governor. They operate under, what is it, Code of Federal Regulations Part 23, which governs federal law enforcement databases. In terms of what allow the In terms of, like, do local jurisdictions have any control over how their data is used? The answer is no, right? The way the problem was defined after 9-11 was that we had all this data on people, but we didn't connect the dots. So to connect the dots, we need to integrate, we need to create what they called an information sharing environment.

And we needed to make it so federal, I mean, the real priority of fusion centers from, you know, DC's perspective is we need federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They need to have access to local law enforcement data. And the way we're going to do that is create these fusion centers which then become like fishing pools for federal agencies to access data. And they can access this data in many ways. There's something called the Homeland Security Information Network which links all 80 of these fusion centers. and allows information to travel across fusion centers. Then there is the embedded federal personnel in fusion centers. And as Fatima mentioned, right, what operators and defenders of fusion centers will say is, well, they don't have a login to these databases, so they're protected. But if you read

You know, if you read the Homeland Security trade publications like Homeland Security Today or the academic journal Homeland Security Affairs, what they talk about is like, One of the big values of fusion centers is to get people in the same room and facilitate informal information sharing. So it's like how does this information get to ICE from From, you know, local law, local jurisdictions, it gets, you know, from this off-the-books, in-person information sharing, which is, which is... You know, kind of impossible to regulate. So the ACLU, like in 2008, put out one of the first big reports on fusion centers. and they kind of denounced this practice of policy shopping.

So when you have a task force and you have a state agency, local agency, federal agency, they're all operating under different rules. and they can pick and choose who is going to be the person to do the action, who has the most permissive legal authority to get from point A to point B. This is why we say abolish the brick, it's beyond reform. It's designed to evade accountability. It's designed to operate in the cracks between state, local, federal law.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Mejia, we'll give you five more minutes. And Councilor Breadon, were you finished? Or did you need more time?

If you're very generous. I know he likes to give people more time. He likes more time himself. I have a couple more questions, if it's permissible, Mr. Chair, or I can wait until Councillor Mejia is finished.

I'm trying to take control. Councillor Mejia has five minutes. Then we'll give you five more minutes, then we'll move to the second panel. And we'll give you closing remarks, two minutes for your closing remarks, and then we'll move to the second panelist. Councilor Mejia?

Okay, I think that those folks who have been following me No, probably why I'm trying to be silenced and censored in this debate here today. I'm just teasing. Yeah, and we'll review the tape too to see how much time you've given other people as opposed to me. But I'm teasing you. So, you know, it's budget season, y'all, right now. And we've been talking about where we can reallocate funds from. And there's been some question around brick. And I was like, well, let's put brick on the chopping block and let's take some of their money so that we can reallocate it to youth jobs and housing. But then there was some question, well, it's a grant, it's federal. So can someone here on this panel tell me how much money does the Boston City Council approve for brick, if at all any?

Yes, so brick doesn't tell you. And we have been researching it. Our colleague Ali will talk about the grant more on the next panel. Brick claims that their budget their annual budget for brick is about four million dollars but there are all of these technologies and other items brick uses that don't fall in and so on. And so we estimate, you know, what's connected to BRIC That budget is much bigger. Like ShotSpotter, there's a regional camera network. There's so many elements connected to Brick that don't fall directly in its budget. So it might be closer to like 8 million if you take into consideration all of that. The DHS grant that comes in,

Covers, and Allie will say this, I think about half of the four million for brick, and then also covers some of those other technologies as well. Brick themselves told you all last year when we talked about this, they would be fine without the grant because the police budget is big enough to do whatever they want. So they're fine. Office of Emergency Management is dependent on that grant because I think may have actually been created because of the grant even. So we need to look at actually funding the emergency management side, making sure they're okay without that grant. The police are always going to be fine. They have plenty of money. So even if you said no to that grant, BPD is going to find it elsewhere. But we do need the city to take seriously How can we fund real emergency management services and not have it tied to DHS's requirements?

That grant says that Brick and BPD have to do election security for this upcoming election under DHS's agenda. You all know what Trump means by election security. They're talking about policing immigrants and anyone who they don't want voting and participating in society here. So we do have to say no to federal money because there are strings attached. And in the budget process, we should also be considering why did we not set up our own Office of Emergency Management? Why are we not making sure that they're funded?

I know we can talk a little bit further in the second panel but this is just a question that has come up and since I've been a big I'm not a proponent of abolishing BRIC and getting rid of the gang database. I'm just trying to think about what the narrative is and usually what people would say no to and because of why. And then it would be helpful for me to hear from folks who are doing the work, living the realities every single day. Because when these grants have come through the council, I've been one of the few voices to oppose And so I'm just curious about the narrative around kind of what are we communicating to our constituents every single time we accept these grants? and we continue to fund things that could be harmful to black and brown people and immigrants.

So kind of like what would you say to my colleagues and especially because the second there's gonna be another grant coming down the pipeline

What would you say? I'll quote Brookline town meeting member Chi Chi Wu, who helped pass the resolution that will have Brookline investigate pulling out of brick. She said, I don't want blood money. I think that's how those folks feel about it. They can see that the DHS strings are attached to that funding. We know what DHS's agenda is, and we know what it's doing to our We have to stop selling our people out.

Thank you, Councilor.

I just want to play that record back, how many times you kept asking Heather questions. Even though you are way past your time, but you are the chair and I'm going to respect you. But I just want to note for the record that I will be doing a rewind and you will be on my Tea Time Instagram video for this moment.

Just remember what Maxine Waters said. I'm claiming my time.

Go ahead, take it.

Thank you so much. Panelists, you each have two minutes to wrap up so we can move on to the next. I almost forgot you. Take three minutes and then we'll give each panelist two minutes to wrap up their time and then we can move to the next panelist. Thank you.

Good, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was just wondering, I thank you for your raising the issue about the Emergency Management Centre, because I think that's a particular, as you say, The Emergency Management Centre is coordinating emergency responses to natural disasters, alternative airplane crashes, whatever. The fact that we're relying on the BRIC grant to fund something that's essential to our public safety and security in the city and a more civilian leg across the board. is sort of disturbing, and that the strings are attached to the brick ground that make it problematic.

I'm just wondering how long does the BRIC retain data collected through the ALPRs and the social media monitoring and field intelligence reports? Do we know how long those records are held and what's the sort of tail to it?

I think we don't know for the ALPRs because they did a free pilot of the new flock ALPRs. and then took them down without coming to you all. So we don't have anything from them. I literally physically went around the street. Like we found some of them and then I had to go back out and check myself to see that they were taken down. So we don't know. And I think on the social media, I mean, according to the Brennan Center, yeah, very little documentation of their practices and data retention. You know, they engaged in this lengthy lawsuit with them. I know they had many conversations with BPD's lawyers and they don't know either.

Can data be collected for one purpose and then repurposed for intelligence analysis without the notice to the individual concerned? Look at something that seems perfectly benign in one context and they can apportion some question to it in another context.

Yeah, I mean, we've received no notice that they were looking at our Instagram account for our organization and putting out all of these reports about our events. It's only through our public records requests. and just community members coming forward with, hey, are they surveilling me? So it's our research that has uncovered that. They're not, yeah, they don't tell anybody. They can look at our social media and not even document it and just say out loud to the person next to them, like, oh, look at what MJL just posted.

And that's that informal communication that's very hard to track. Yeah. Yeah, very good. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councillor. We'll give each panelist two minutes and then we'll move on to some public testimony. We've got one person. on Zoom to testify, and then only four persons that are present. We'll give them each two minutes after this panel. We'll call up the next panel, and then we'll once again give. House of Mejia, five minutes. Panelists?

I want to thank Brendan and Mejia for both driving long distances to be here and thank the next panel and everyone who keeps showing up to City Council to talk about this. And again, I think you're going to hear from more and more cities that want to pull out of brick because of these concerns. But the power really lies within Boston to actually abolish brick. It sits within the Boston Police Department. and I'm grateful that the council keeps talking about this. I wish more councillors were here and we'd love to have follow-up conversations because the UOSCE grant vote will We don't want BRIC to continue

Just without that funding and still looking at our social media and still surveilling us for constitutionally protected activities. So at the end of the day, we're gonna keep demanding that you abolish BRIC and there's just more and more people joining our voices every time.

Well, thank you all for this opportunity to speak to you today. I guess in closing, the one thing that I would want to emphasize is that even though you are city councillors, in one particular city, the stakes of this battle are quite high. So when DHS was created, This was right after the dot-com boom went bust. And what political economists have found is that the surge in security spending that Accompanied the creation of DHS and fusion centers was basically security Keynesianism. It helped fund, helped restore the economy. So the important thing here is that

Fusion Centers are, you know, there's this whole complex of private interests, you know, security vendors that are driving and lobbying to expand surveillance, right? And the way these operate increasingly is as platforms, right? So flock security is kind of like Uber for surveillance cameras. right like if Boston has flock cameras then data picked up on those cameras are accessible to anyone with a FLOC login. So what we're doing is actually increasing the data that local jurisdictions are giving is feeding into nation, you know, privatized nationwide surveillance systems, right? So, you know, if you were to shut down the BRIC, you'd be doing something very valuable in that you'd be, you know,

Shrinking the market and reducing the power of these firms that are trying to make money in very cynical and anti-democratic ways that I think are trending towards a future where it's harder to exercise are basic constitutional rights.

Thank you.

Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today. I really do appreciate it. And what I heard today was that the Boston City Council doesn't want to support ICE, that the Boston City Council doesn't want to support DHS's that the Boston City Council wants to protect our vulnerable immigrant neighbors. As long as a brick exists, that goal could never be achieved. The Trump administration is working extremely hard to access information that it doesn't have access to right now. It's going after the IRS to provide information about immigrants. It's utilizing all of its agencies that have never shared information in the past, including TSA, USCIS. You have ICE coming to the immigration courts when people are showing up for their hearings. You have ICE going to appointments when people are showing up for their applications to go through that process because that's the information that they have.

It is ridiculous to believe that they would not access the information through this fusion center. They have direct access to it already. So they are using it. It is the fuel to the mass deportation campaign. And as long as it exists, that's what the Boston City Council is doing. It's giving a thumbs up to that campaign.

Thank you. Maya?

Thank you so much for having me here today. And this is really the first venue for serious redress of what happened to me. But more importantly, the brick is a tendril of DHS operating right here. There is no firewall. There's not going to be because it was designed as a post 9-11 pass-through of information. That is what its function has always It's what it always will be as long as it's allowed to exist. And once you're sharing information, you can't pull it back. So the break has to go.

Thank you to all the panelists. Thank you so much. We'll now move to a public testimony. Mejia has to say something real quick.

That's right, real quick. I want to note that we were super intentional about making this hearing a listening session for us to hear. Normally, we would have the administration here. I want you all to think that we did not invite the administration. What we really wanted is to have this hearing be focused on the research, on the lived experience, and to create space for my council colleagues to Thank you. For the public testimony,

Alex Martheos. Yes, I'm going to take these four public testimonies first, then we'll go to the panelists. Thank you. Susan Mayor, Bernadette Murphy, and Linda Flores. You can step to the mic starting with Alex.

Hello.

Thank you. Okay, the mic is working.

You have two minutes. That's good. Hi, my name is Alex Matthews. I am the co-chair of Digital Fourth. We are a local volunteer civil liberties group that deals with privacy and surveillance issues. We've been researching and advocating around the BRIC since 2013. There are a couple of things I'd like to highlight. Regarding brick. First, there is a lot of pressure on brick from the feds. and the feds are very interested in identifying People who they perceive as being threatening along a number of axes that you may not be familiar with the federal government being interested in.

They have identified as targets people who are, in their eyes, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist or critical of traditional gender binaries. They are now targeting comments critical of AI or of data centers, and we just received word today that down in Pennsylvania, Fusion Center is cooperating with that. New AI technologies enable any analyst to surface your entire online footprint to integrate it and to surface interpretations of how much you constitute a threat. The context and the legal constraints on this are flimsy.

They exist, there is something referred to by Professor McQuaid called 28 CFR part 23 that tries to make crime the police's business and things that are not crime not the police's business. Unfortunately, that does not work and BRIC does not adhere to it and never has. It has many records and many databases not based on reasonable suspicion of an individual's involvement in a crime.

Thank you. Thank you. Susan, fellow by Bernadette, and then Linda Flores.

Hello, I'm Susan Moyer. I'm here as a member of the old dykes against billionaire tech bros. Trying to get his attention. Hi. So I think I would say, first of all, there are credible threats, very credible threats against our safety, the quality of our lives, against our communities. and I would say that I think that environmental destruction and mass surveillance supporting authoritarianism are bigger threats than domestic terrorism. So we're in the wrong ballpark. We're not going after the threats. One of the things I wanted to mention is there are nine cities and towns in Brook. What are the resources of Brookline versus Chelsea? or Cambridge versus Winthrop.

How is this massive amount of money spread around? Is it even? No, I would say probably lower resources in Chelsea and probably higher criminalization by the cops. So you've heard all about the abuses. You've heard the lies they tell. You've heard the market strategy. We're against the billionaire tech bros. They are selling you products so that they can get richer and richer and spend the summer on their yachts. or on Mars. They can send one of them, send all of them. So I think, I want to say that I'm a labor person, so I know the power of the police unions. I sat on the executive board of the AFL-CIO for many years. I was a member of the Greater Boston Labor Council. Those people have kids too. And our kids are not all right. And our kids are not all right because of authoritarianism and environmental destruction. Those are the credible threats to our lives.

One other thing that I think is going to get mentioned on the next panel before I get cut off. What is the definition of domestic terrorism? Well, it's written down in their annual blah, blah, blah, blah. In the last one that they put out, that this administration put out, extreme trans ideology is defined as domestic terrorist terrorism. I stand before you as a domestic terrorist. and say we should concentrate on the environmental problems, we should concentrate on stopping authoritarianism, and this whole thing we're talking about is a foundation for promoting authoritarianism, and we should really think about how evenly resources are spread out in this region that is now called BRIC. How about a regional improvement center for the citizens of this whole area? Thank you very much.

and then Linda Flores.

Hi. So I'm Bernadette Murphy. I'm a resident of Roslindale. And I'm a newly retired public school high school teacher. I taught social studies. And one of the wonderful things about teaching social studies You get to talk about civics and the importance of speaking out and of course I did that with my students so when I learned about BRIC I felt like I needed to come and talk to you. I think that when I read the summary of the Brennan report, and I'm most concerned with the broad monitoring of social media without specific policies or documentation. and having been a high school teacher for a lot of years in a lot of different places, I just want to say that I am worried about Students and young people who get pulled into the databases of BRIC and then they get labeled

and we know that that happens to young people all the time and especially of course young people of color and it's important to me that Here, as a resident of this city, that we have this opportunity, you have this opportunity to get rid of brick. And it's so very important. And also, my work as an activist in my life, I could get labeled a domestic terrorist, as Susan mentioned. And this is crazy stuff. Big Brother. This is all the other things we've taught in schools. Look out for 1984. What is happening right here in this country? I also want to mention that the two Most important things would be the credible threats to monitoring from the 2024 elections. So there were no credible threats, but there was monitoring of the 2024 elections. This is not helpful.

And then last, that they have these policies they haven't finished developing, and they've been developing them from 2022. And let me end with, if we give up freedom for security, we're in danger of losing both. And that was Benjamin Franklin said that to us, right? Okay, thanks.

Linda Flores. Linda Flores.

I am Linda Flores, but I'm an interpreter.

Oh, you're an interpreter? Yeah, so I think I'm... And you have no testimony.

I don't, but she is here. I believe I'm supposed to speak to this young lady.

We're going to get right to the panelists. There's no more requests from the public. No more? Well, let us move to the panelists now. Two of our panelists are on. Thank you. Two of our panelists are virtual. Allie Finn and Sarah Stokes are virtual. And Sarah and Allie, we'll give you seven minutes. I want to bring up the other two panelists, Wendy Lazo and Reverend Annie Gonzalez. Thank you. And Ali, you have seven minutes and then we'll move on to Sarah Stokes.

Sarah, you'll have seven minutes and then we'll move to our panelists. Thank you. Ali, you have the floor.

Wonderful. Can you hear me okay? Great, thank you so much for having me. My name is Ali Finn. I'm a researcher and a policy advocate focused on surveillance technology, the impacts of AI systems and infrastructure and technology policy. I currently work as the Director of Community Partnerships at the AI Now Institute. I'm here testifying in personal capacity. I've conducted research on the Homeland Security Grant Program, specifically the Urban Area Security Initiative, or UASI, since 2022 and research into BRIC and UASI over the past year and a half. My testimony will focus on how DHS's UASI program functions as a Trojan horse and who it serves and does not serve in Boston.

My first point is that UASI purports to support emergency response, but in reality diverts critically needed funding from actual emergency services and public health, trapping cities, including Boston, into increased spending on policing and surveillance. and targeting of immigrants. UAC enables the federal government to further impose its priorities onto Boston and other localities. It looks like a multi-million dollar gift, but it's actually a mechanism for federal control and harm to communities. This happens both by design of DHS for the two plus decades of the program's existence and to an even more extreme degree in Boston as the city overspends the required grant percentages on funding for policing, surveillance, and the fusion center. So DHS requires that cities allocate 35% Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. surveillance and militarized policing equipment, training, and staffing that the city does not need. This percentage requirement has increased over the last five years, from 25 to 35% from 2021, reducing the amount of funding available within the grant for actual emergency response. And it's DHS, not the city of Boston, that determines what these funds can be spent on. As I believe the Council knows, DHS also requires that all grant recipients use the funds for at least one project for their local or state fusion center. and DHS also sets priorities for the UASI program overall, requiring that grantees allocate a percentage of the funds towards specific focus areas that it decides through determining national priority areas.

These also broadly correlate to information sharing between local and federal authorities, and surveillance and policing technologies. And the Trump administration has further weaponized these priorities, which I'll speak about in a moment. Critically, cities including Boston cannot access the funds for actual emergency response projects like public health without meeting these spending priorities. And alarmingly, our research shows that the City of Boston has not only followed these requirements, but exceeded them. The City of Boston's spending on LEPA are consistently higher than DHS and FEMA requirements over the last five years, in some years exceeding 50% of the total grant allocations in the proposals. Strings have always been attached to UASI funding since the foundation of the program, but the Trump administration is further instrumentalizing this to push its agenda onto Boston and other localities.

Based on the 2025 updates to the program, DHS now requires local and state governments to cooperate with ICE in order to access millions of UASI funding. This prompted huge outcry last year. So grant recipients are required to dedicate at least 10% of their awarded funds towards border crisis response and enforcement. This would be $92.7 million across the country. And this includes participation in 287 , cooperating with ICE detainers, and technology and information sharing. The terms also state that by accepting funding, grantees certify they won't use UACI to advance or promote DEI or operate any programs that benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration. I'm quoting there. There's also a minimum requirement spend, as Fatima mentioned, for election security, which can similarly be weaponized. DHS has threatened to withdraw all funding from grantees that don't meet this threshold. This happened in Massachusetts.

It's being challenged in court. but the point here is not the reduction of funding, it's that this whole grant program is rotten at the core to begin with and it is not worth it. What does UASI actually fund in Boston? In many cases, it's direct surveillance technology that city residents themselves have opposed. Shotspotter, cameras, license plate readers, digital forensics tools that allow police to break into locked devices. And put together, these are tools for mass data collection and analysis on Boston residents in collaboration with Prick on a scale more broad than the gang database that would allow agencies with access to this information to share with the federal government. And I want to ask the council, do you know exactly what UAC funds or how much DHS has access to the information that technologies collect? My guess is no, and that is by the design of the grant and how these information sharing systems work.

So to conclude, I want to point out that UASI and its funding for the BRIC is a gift not to Boston residents, but to a federal administration at the expense of Boston residents. It's a gift to them of a controversial gang database that can further expand immigration detentions, a gift to the Trump administration of a fusion center that surveils and criminalizes both Muslim and Jewish communities, It's a gift to the Trump administration of expanded police tech and immigration enforcement that Boston residents have consistently rejected. And I urge you to strongly reconsider any continued participation in the program. Thank you. I'll also note very briefly, I apologize, I do have to drop off around 4.30, but I'm happy to stay and take questions until then.

Thank you. I want to move to Sarah Stokes. Sarah, are you on? We're gonna get back. We'll get to Sierra, then you.

Hi, good afternoon. I apologize. I had to rejoin. Can everyone hear me?

You have seven minutes. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilor Mejia, for your leadership, and thank you all for convening this hearing. My name is Sarah Sherman-Stokes. I am a clinical professor of law at Boston University School of Law, where I teach immigration law and I am the Associate Director of the Immigrants Rights Clinic. In this role, I have researched and written about the intersection of detention, deportation, immigrant surveillance and enforcement. Our clinic also represents people facing deportation across New England. I'm here to tell you the story of one of those people, a young man named Orlando. Orlando was a high school student, a part-time restaurant worker, A son and a brother when a mundane disagreement in a Boston high school cafeteria led to his arrest, detention, and deportation. When Orlando was a teenage student at East Boston High School, he had a verbal disagreement in the school cafeteria Basically a teenage rite of passage.

But in Orlando's case, another teenager alleged, incorrectly, that Orlando was affiliated with a gang. This information, based on the unsubstantiated rumor of a teenage boy, was entered into the Brick Gang database. Shortly thereafter, ICE showed up at Orlando's family's home, arrested Orlando, held him in immigration detention for nearly two years. During this time, Orlando struggled mightily as we tenaciously fought his case. Sadly, Orlando became extremely depressed and then suicidal. He could not tolerate prolonged separation from his father and two brothers and being confined with adult men and the prospect of being deported to a place he had fled as a young toddler. Ultimately, ICE deported Orlando to El Salvador, where he now lives in fear and poverty.

The only reason this happened, the only reason that Orlando was targeted, arrested, detained, and deported is because of the brick. The BRIC is a spy center. It is a centralized site of massive information sharing between law enforcement agencies and an incredibly popular surveillance tool. It is funded largely by DHS. The origin story of this fusion center or of fusion centers in general, as others have said, is racist, is Islamophobic, and bigoted. Fusion centers were created in the early 2000s in the wake of 9-11. and the racist anti-Muslim rhetoric that fueled the creation of fusion centers like the BRIC continue to inspire the way that the BRIC operates. The BRIC and other fusion centers consistently collect private, First Amendment, and constitutionally protected information about protesters, activists, and immigrant communities. In Greater Boston, The BRIC has surveilled lawful political activity

has been the basis of intelligence reports on anti-war groups and local activists like Howard Zinn, the National Lawyers Guild, and the ACLU. Brick has also surveilled the social media of Muslims as well as anyone using the Black Lives Matter hashtag. The BRIC also houses the gang database. 98% of people in the BRIC's gang database are people of color, and more than 75% of people in the database are black men or teenagers. In 2022, the First Circuit Court of Appeals here in Boston expressed serious concerns about the BRICS gang database and the flawed system for determining who is included, including kids like Orlando. The BRIC does not keep us safe. There was a question earlier about whether the BRIC keeps us safe, and in fact there's no evidence that fusion centers like the BRIC have actually provided any kind of meaningful improvements to public safety or the pursuit of counterterrorism. their initial stated purpose.

On the contrary, the unregulated and relentless sharing of sensitive information with little to no oversight or accountability has yielded massive privacy breaches For example, in a 2020 data breach, hackers exposed hundreds of thousands of sensitive records from more than 200 state, local, and federal agencies collected in these fusion centers. And presently, as alluded to earlier, There is absolutely no mechanism to hold the BRIC accountable for errors or misconduct. The BRIC and fusion centers like it have long produced significantly flawed analysis while also relentlessly targeting black and brown communities and lawful constitutionally protected political activity. They've done so under the guise of counterterrorism and public safety though the evidence that fusion centers have improved either is negligible at best. The BRIC relies on unsubstantiated rumors and hearsay, terrorizes local communities, particularly individuals and families of color,

And in doing so, the brick is absolutely integral to the deportation machine, as it was in Orlando's case. Boston can take a critical step towards protecting our neighbors and community members by immediately withdrawing from the brick. Thank you very much. And I also have to sign off at 4.30, but I welcome your questions until then.

You now have five minutes.

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, Ali. Can you hear me? You know, I'm curious, a few months ago, maybe, actually no, maybe eight or nine months ago, our mayor stated that applying for the grant Given the new regulations around border patrol and the water, I think it was with the Marines, not the Marines, I'm not sure what specifically it was. It had something to do with the border patrol and the harbor, I believe. What the mayor stated, and I'm going to look it up and I'm going to have somebody, if my team is listening in, I would like to quote specifically what the mayor stated, but that we were going to pursue it because there was a way to ensure that

The city would not be corresponding or engaging with DHS. Is that true? Is there a way for us to bypass that, Ali?

Could you restate the question? I'm sorry, it was hard to hear.

I know. It's also hard to explain what I'm trying to say. So the mayor, I know I want to be nice, so I'm just trying to find all the right words, stated that we were going to be pursuing The grant because there is some this belief that we could bypass some of the prerequisites specifically around some of the border patrol and I don't know if I can confirm or deny that to be true or false, but are there ways for us to be able to apply for this grant while also protecting our immigrant communities?

That's a great question. My understanding is that the city said in applying for the 2025 funds said that BRIC itself meets the border enforcement requirement and allocated the whole required 10% under BRIC in the application. To me, that says everything we need to know. that BRIC and fusion centers work in such a way that already aids immigration enforcement. And to answer the second part of your question, as the requirements are written, because DHS and many more.

to safely accept this grant and guarantee that immigrant communities or any other community targeted by the federal government is protected. So I would highly, strongly encourage the council and any city that receives UACI funding to look for other sources of funding for actual emergency response. Did that answer your question, Councillor?

Absolutely, and thank you for your patience as I was trying to formulate what I was trying to remember exactly what the words were in the article that I read, but I couldn't. So thank you for understanding. But you actually answered the question because I think it's important for my colleagues to know that while there is this belief, there is still harm that we are creating by accepting this grant. So thank you for articulating that. And now, Sarah, you know, I was a parent back in the day working with some folks in East Boston, and I remember being at the East Boston Library In regards to Orlando's case, and at the time I did not know what we were getting into, and we were dealing with VPS, we were thinking that it was a case of discrimination, and we didn't know what we were getting into, and I cannot believe that this is the case that

has really set the stage for a lot of the work that I've done here on the Boston City Council because of the harm that we continue to cause so many of our Boston public school students in particular So can you just talk to us a little bit about how BPS and BPD, allegedly they're no longer interacting with each other with ICE. Have you heard of any other cases or anything that we should be mindful of in terms of especially what's happening right now in this climate with ICE and Boston Public Schools and our police department? What type of interaction, if any, can you speak to? since the Orlando case, if any.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Councillor. I think and I appreciate all of your advocacy and your work. I think what's concerning is that we often don't know about these events until after they happen. Although Orlando's case stands out as being particularly harrowing and particularly harmful, Orlando is not alone. There certainly are other young people who have been targeted in racial profiling We know that the BRIC has shared BPS school student information with the brick over the last 10 years or so. And that should be deeply concerning to all of us. So while they may have officially stated that they're no longer working together. I think that there's every indication that information continues to be shared.

And we know that there have been incidents of ice being at or near Boston Public Schools or staging activities near or at Boston Public Schools or in parking lots across the street from Boston Public Schools. The climate of fear and terror that this creates for school children and their families is undeniable and incredibly pronounced. So unfortunately, even if cooperation does not happen at an official level, it does appear to continue.

Thank you. And just one more thing, Councilor Culpepper. Recently, there was a nail salon in Hyde Park and the police was there, the FBI, and I just so happened to be on a thread for rapid response and to see if this is a real ICE raid or not. And I went to this space, and the FBI was there. The Boston Police was there. And when I arrived on the scene, I was told that it had nothing to do with ICE. But the climate, because there was FBI there, a lot of the women that were inside the nail salon were afraid to open the door. and the Boston, I had to speak to them. They wouldn't open the door, even though they knew it was Constable Mejia, they were so afraid. And I'm so glad because they learned

I just want to shout out to the Know Your Rights that people are actually knowing what to do regardless of who's on the other side of the door. But the Boston Police Department was interacting with FBI even though ICE was not there. So when we're looking at how ICE right now, from what I understand, they do have some relationships and some communication with the FBI. Sarah, I'm not sure if that's beyond your grade level or whatever, but like, or Allie, can either one of you just talk to us about the role that FBI ICE agents and BPD, how they all kind of sometimes are interacting and communicating with each other. Does that exist, yes or no? Like what?

Go ahead. Go ahead, Ali. I defer to you to start if you want.

Maybe that wouldn't be for the first panel, but I'm just curious, because I think what's going to happen, Allie, the reason why I'm asking this question is because the BRIC will come here and try to defend their funds and the reason why they exist. And I want to make sure that any holes that I can poke and any information that we can have will make our advocacy stronger. And so there is a relationship that I have heard of between FBI, ICE, and Boston Police Department and how dangerous that could be specifically to our undocumented loved ones. So if you could just talk to me about what that looks like.

Yes, I can speak about that in broad strokes and Brendan on the previous panel and Fatima are really the The experts here. There are many, many ways the information sharing and collaboration and cooperation happen between local police, including BPD, and federal policing agents including DHS, ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, and the FBI and many others. I'll name a few of them. There's direct contracts, right? A 287G. In the case of Boston and many others, there are also task forces, right, that bring together representatives of the different policing agencies across local, state, federal, sometimes even tribal levels. So, for example, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, JTTF, is led by the FBI. It is one of the federal task forces housed at the BRIC.

And there's two BPD officers, in my understanding. who work from Brick who are part of that, right? So they're sitting in a room or sitting on a call with FBI agents. Also, just the way that fusion centers, including BRIC, are set up is you have DHS agents from ICE as well as HSI. sitting at a desk at BRIC with FBI agents, with BPD agents all together. And it's very hard to document and track how information sharing happens just in conversations. and then of course the the very nature of the databases that are being used, the corporate surveillance technology products, platforms that Brendan mentioned.

Those are taking data from both private, public, law enforcement sources, putting them together, profiling people, telling stories about people, and spitting that back out to the many different policing agencies that use them. These are just a few ways that that collaboration happens. There are certainly others.

Thank you. Thank you for that. And I thank Councilor Culpepper for allowing me to go a little over. Thank you, Arlene, and thank you, Sarah.

I want to turn to our panelists now. And Ali and Sarah, you can stay on. You don't have to get off. I know you said you had a hard 4.30 where you had to get off. But if you want to stay on, you can. And let's move to our panelists, Wendy Lazo and Reverend Annie Gonzalez. You each have seven minutes to make your opening statement.

Hola, buenas tardes.

I'm just going to clarify.

Can you hear me? Yes.

I just want to clarify with her just for the purpose because we're all going to be out loud. I'm going to ask her that we're going to take this consecutively, interpreting consecutively. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Wendy Lazo.

I am a leader in the community and I work for

Nube, which is neighbors.

United for a better Boston.

United for a better Boston, okay.

It's a...

Organization that actually empowered the community, their rights, and their defense.

El desarrollo de líderes, acción cívica para que East Boston y sus alrededores sea un lugar más justo.

Can she come sit, maybe stand here? Yeah, I think it's probably better. So. Mmm, let's see. So the organization, NUBE, it empowers the community through the defense of people's rights, development of leaders, civic action in East Boston and its surroundings. For a better or more just community.

Para la comunidad de bajos recursos, de bajos ingresos e inmigrantes como residentes de East Boston y una persona que trabaja en la comunidad, estamos preocupados sobre el programa BRIC.

We support low-income people, immigrants, and as a resident of East Boston and someone who works for the community, we are concerned about

and the BRIC program.

We do feel that we're in surveillance by a racism or racist system.

because they take our information and share it.

This is a system that they don't want us here. Even though we are part of the development and economy of the country,

Comparten toda nuestra privacidad y la gran mayoría de la comunidad está con miedo de dar su información o poner denuncias de abusos o violencia porque

They do share all our private information and most of us in the community are in fear of actually sharing on our own. Thank you. because they're asking all the information to the police and then they call us criminals. The system, the police system call us gang members, criminals.

and terrorists. So if BRIC is here since 2005 to work on our behalf, take care of us,

So why were they not able to prevent what happened in 2013?

Por lo que pedimos que eliminen el BRIC, no poner más fondos en un programa que está aliado al sistema federal para contribuir a secuestrar

So we are asking for you not to continue to fund or contribute With money, right? To a system that is designed to really come and take us away and return us to our country or deport us to our country.

Que el único delito ha sido venir a buscar una mejor vida a este país que ha sido el causante de mucha inmigración de nuestros países a través de las guerras.

So the only wrong thing that we have done is come into this country in search of a better life, which is due to the fact of the war in our own countries.

We don't need more surveillance.

We don't want to leave terrorized in our communities.

Queremos que nuestros hijos crezcan con una salud emocional estable, que no sientan temor de estar siendo vigilados.

We want our children to grow up with a stable emotional health, that they don't feel that they're being... Terrorized. Yeah, terrorized. Watch by others.

Constantemente que no tengan que ser separados de sus padres.

That they don't have to say that they're going to be separated from their parents. As a member of the community and as a mother, I'm asking you that these funds that you want to invest in BRIC, Maybe you want to invest them in work for the youth? Yeah, they call them gang members, criminals, so why don't we invest the money in the youth so that they're not on the streets trying to

That way we can have a strong youth.

and maybe they will see the mission of this country with a different perspective.

Thank you so much. Reverend Gonzalez, you have seven minutes.

Thank you. Yes, as you said, I'm Reverend Annie Gonzalez. I live at, sorry, my phone thinks I'm trying to talk to it.

I'm not.

Okay, sorry about that. I was a resident of Jamaica Plain from 2014 to 2022. I now live in Malden and I serve a congregation in Bedford. I have been part of the core team of volunteers with the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network, otherwise known as Bijan or Beyond, since we began in late 2017. I'm also a Unitarian Universalist minister. And one part of my job is to offer pastoral care, which is basically emotional support to people going through something hard. So I want to tell you a story, and it's actually a story that sounds very similar to the story that Sarah told you, but it's not the same person. And it's a story about me offering some pastoral care on Mother's Day in 2019.

I met up with Maria who is living in East Boston at a McDonald's near the Suffolk County Jail and at that time ICE had a contract with the Suffolk County Jail and her son was being held there by ICE. and she wanted to visit him but she was so upset she wanted some support before she went in to see her son. And she told me how her son had been put on the gang database and she didn't know what BRIC was She didn't know about how it operated, but what she told me was they said he was a gang member because of the color of shirt he was wearing. And she said, I gave him that shirt. I gave him that shirt for Christmas. And she knew about what gang violence can do to a community because she had come from El Salvador to this country because her daughters couldn't go to school where they were living. Because if they tried to go to school, they'd be raped on their way to school. And she said, I don't know, was it a good idea that I came here?

Now my daughters are safer, but now they take my son away from me. She had to flee that violence just to end up with more violence. Her son was also deported, like Orlando. And after he was deported, I remember talking to her on the phone and she said he doesn't even leave the house because he's too scared. He's too scared by the violence that he could face in El Salvador. And so he was just hiding in his relative's home. This is a kid who grew up in our community, who went to Boston Public Schools. And he had his whole future taken away from him because of the racism in Fairmont Green and a shirt that his mom bought him. So this is the story that I know the most intimately about how brick has hurt people in Beyond's community, but I know there are others. And I don't know if it was Ermi who was picked up in Hyde Park in this past year, who's now deported away from his citizen partner. I don't know if it was Edwin who's from East Boston who got nabbed on his way to work.

A young person deported away from his parents. I don't know if it was Barnsell who lives in Boston who called the cops when his husband pulled a knife on him and ended up deported. I don't know for sure what role BRIC played in any of these specific arrests or in the other 97 cases that are in our current database that pertain to Boston residents. because in Beyond, our database is focused on notes about whether people have a lawyer, whether they have a bond order, if they need court accompaniment, if their wife is facing eviction. We don't ask people to explain how they ended up in ICE, but we just try to help them. So we don't actually know in each specific case whether the fusion center, whether the data sharing between DHS and local police and other law enforcement was a direct cause of each of these specific cases. I'm certain that it has contributed to some of them. We get about one request each week for district court accompaniment.

This is someone who's worried that ICE might show up when they go to a district court hearing. People are afraid to show up at these court dates that they want to attend because they don't trust the system and they know that information is being shared between local law enforcement and DHS. And so they don't know what's going to happen. They want to go clear up the traffic violation, the domestic dispute, the conflict with their neighbor, but they fear that they'll be arrested by ICE. And all we can do is support them and go with them and try to mitigate that risk. The people we accompany are up against so much. They are people who fled their home country because they couldn't make enough money to survive, or because their loved ones were killed by gang members, or because they were gay and they couldn't be themselves. or because they were political organizers and they had threats on their life or were tortured by their governments. They're up against high housing costs and inflation and language barriers and racism.

They do not need to be surveilled and put on gang databases. They do not need to be watched with cameras. They do not need to be deported back to dangerous places that they left, all in the name supposedly of public safety. That does not keep anybody safe. Thank you.

Thank you, Reverend. Counselor, you have five minutes. Culpepper.

Thank you. You know, it's for me, I know I'm a politician, but I lead with my heart, and it is very sometimes re-traumatizing to hear this. I talk about the fact that my mom was undocumented when I was growing up, and so this whole notion of living in constant fear is the social and emotional burden and the toll that so many of our immigrant undocumented or people who have mixed status or people who, I became a US citizen through naturalization and you know, I'm also at risk for being on the hit list to be deported at some point just because of my own political posture and so there is a lot of fear and I think it's important for us to acknowledge that while we're here to talk about brick and the importance of

making sure that the city council understands the political impact. I also think that the emotional and the moral dialogue has to be part of this conversation too because those two Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The Heart of the Matter. And I think that that's what you all have done in your testimonies. So thank you for bringing all of that into this space because it is why we exist in this chamber. It's not to forget who we're here to fight for. So I want to say thank you for that. And so with that, I'm just curious if you can just either, you know, whoever's still on, whether it's online or here,

Talk to us a little bit about some of the community concerns that you have heard from the broader community about data collection and information sharing. What are other folks saying? In your congregation, en la comunidad, what are some of the things that folks have been sharing with you all around the fear of data collection? Do you want me to say it in Spanish, Wendy? I would like to know, you know, in the community there is so much fear nowadays. Everyone is afraid. I would like to know what your community heard about the fear I have with all the information they are collecting. Particularmente en la comunidad que no tienen estatus.

I'm going to put myself...

I'm going to put myself as a first person in this situation where I also work in the community even though I have no documentation and I support that.

So the community, we are scared because we know that the police, they are sharing information with ICE.

I know that many people in this place, they have heard about the case with Alejandro. that came out in many places in the TV or communication places. He has some issues with a neighbor.

El vecino llamó la policía.

The neighbor called the police.

El policía llegó y lo primero que hizo fue pedirle su documentación.

And the police officer, he came and the first thing that he asked was for his documents. So he arrests Alejandro and he brought him to the department of the police officers here in Boston. That happens around eight or nine in the morning.

November 20, 2025. From Boston, they got him to the court of East Boston around 11, 1130 in the morning.

During that time, they had enough time to share that information with the ICE department.

When Alejandro got to the court of East Boston, I was already there. and the judge, he took the judgment away.

In the same place, the people from ICE, they changed their handcuffs from the police department and they put their own handcuffs.

Entonces, ¿cómo es que Boston es una ciudad santuario si comparte información con ICE?

How is the Boston if they share information with ICE? And that's why our community is scared.

Thank you. I wanted to ask Reverend Gonzales, I wanted to ask you a question about the organization that you created and because the name is Thank you. Because the name is Boston Immigrant Justice Accompanying Network, your major focus is accompanying Different folks to and from court.

So yes, that is one of the initial things we were doing when we named ourselves. You never know how the future will go. So I think you could now describe us better as the New England You know, ICE jail support team or something like that. But at the time when we started, it was more focused on Boston and it was more focused on going with people to court Dates and things like that. But we do accompany people to ICE check-ins at the ICE office as well as district court accompaniment as well as to their immigration hearings, whether in person or virtual online.

And are most of the clients dealing with ICE issues?

So yes, we mostly support people who are already detained because there's not a lot of organizations that support people who are already in ICE jail. We mostly support people in immigration jail in New England or from Massachusetts, but we also do support community members who are not detained who might, for example, have a hearing. Someone reached out to me recently, and she was like, this is my friend. His neighbor took out some kind of complaint against him, and now he's supposed to go to court, but he's so scared because he's undocumented. We do accompany people in those kind of situations as well.

And do you always work with them on obtaining counsel?

Well, if it's a criminal charge, obviously they have access to a public defender. If it's immigration court, it's very difficult to get an immigration lawyer, but we do have some Ability to match people with some pro bono attorneys. And then for civil matters, I don't really know how counsel works, to be honest with you.

All right, thank you. We've got one more. Virtual Panelist Nathan Phillips. We're going to end this hearing at 5, so we've got about 17 minutes. Nathan will give you two of that 17 minutes. and then we'll come back to Councilor Mejia for final questions and then we'll give our panelists two minutes each to make your closing statements, if I can call them that. Thank you. Nathan?

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you, Nathan.

Okay, thank you, Councilor Culpepper, and I also want to thank Councilor Mejia for all of your work on this issue and protecting our immigrant community and all Bostonians. I'm ironically not a resident of Boston, but I'd like to share my experience that connects some dots to the City of Boston, Chelsea, and across the agencies associated with BRIC, including the FBI. I spend about a third of my life in Boston because I teach at Boston University. I'm a professor of ecology there. And the experience I had just a little over a year ago was FBI agents, two individuals showed up to my home while I was at work in Boston at Boston University and approached my house

and my wife answered the door and they wanted to know where Aitman was and I wasn't there obviously and my wife said she's not here And they said, oh, he must be at work. So they knew I was in Boston. And it was a very disturbing and jaw dropping experience to have that happen to me. I don't even know why. It may be because I've been politically active. It may be because I have been active on social media in some of the ways that have been mentioned earlier. I have been involved in nonviolent, peaceful civil disobedience before. And so it's puzzling, but I wanted to make the point, particularly for Maybe some of the more privileged people. I shudder to think about how our immigrant community members, particularly people of color,

have been treated as described earlier. But there may be people who carry some privilege like I do out in places like Newton who may buy the line that law enforcement is here to protect us all and they're trying to do the best they can. I'm here to say that my experience was that they were bad actors and not to be trusted. And I'm saying that because when I heard them looking for me, I didn't know what to do. and my lawyer actually advised me against this later gently, but I called the FBI in their Chelsea field office. which I think they refer to as their Boston field office even though it's in Chelsea. So one of the BRIC communities there in the FBI and I finally was able to get to an actual live human and when I asked why and if they were looking for me, they just hung up on me without telling me.

It's not clear to us to this day whether the two individuals who showed up at my home were both FBI and many more. They could answer. I went to them to figure out, well, what do you want from me? And they operate in the shadows. They're not good actors, and they're not being upfront or truthful about what their intentions are. So for all of the people who may think that they have good intentions and that brick is serving the best interests of the city, my personal experience is that that's not the case. They're not being honest and forthcoming. So I appreciate all of your efforts to hold them to account and to really disengage and defund the brick.

So thank you so much for taking my testimony.

Thank you, Dr. Sitter. We've got 13 minutes left. I'll give Councilor Mejia Three minutes. I'll give each of our panelists two minutes. I'll take two minutes myself. And is Professor Phillips still there or is he gone? Well, I guess he'll have. No, ma'am. It's gone. Councilor Mejia.

So, you know, I think this is the beginning of what I hope to be, I think, the beginning of a second conversation. I think that We have an opportunity to unpack this a little bit further, maybe potentially with the administration and some folks from the BRIC. Just to kind of what say you now, what you've heard. And I'm not sure where the appetite may be for that. But Fatima, I'll look to you to see if we can host a second hearing. I think that there would be a nice exchange of conversation. Withbrick, and the commissioner. So hopefully we can make that happen. And I think that given the fact that the mayor and the administration is moving forward with this application, I think having Allie in that hearing would be really helpful to us. I mean, to arm us with real data and real information about how we can really unpack what we're hearing

So I would like to invite you all for a second hearing at some point before it's time for us to take that vote. And then I also would, it's not so much I don't have any more questions, but I just want to utilize my time to state that. You know, there's 13 city councilors that represent the city of Boston as a whole. And some of us are district councilors and they represent very specific neighborhoods. They may say, oh, that really is not an issue that really impacts the district that I represent. And this is what I've been saying to my colleagues is I don't care what district you represent because the votes that you take impact the city as a whole. And I think it's really important for you all to understand that narrative because we're going to have to make sure that all district councilors, regardless of the neighborhoods that they represent, that they understand the impact that they have on the votes that they're taking as it relates to this brick funding.

So I just want to name that as part of your advocacy is that all city councilors should be put on notice that their votes impact the city as a whole. So I'm sharing that with the organizers so that you can make sure that they all know that. And then the last thing that I will say is that we are at a very interesting time in America. and I know that based on the budget hearings that we've been having and the budget fights that we've been having inside this chamber is that people keep deferring to the threat that's happening on the federal level and how all eyes are on Boston. as it relates to the Trump administration. And I want to just say is that we can chew gum and talk at the same time. That's an American thing. That's what you all say, right? You can do two things at the same time. We can remain vigilant about what's happening with Trump while also understanding that on the local level, we also have to protect our immigrant loved ones.

And that includes looking at how we're utilizing our financial resources to support and empower the police to surveil Our communities. And so that has to be a part of the narrative that I'm going to share with you all because it should not be, oh, Trump is looking at Boston and we should give the administration a pass at everything. Trump is looking at Boston, and this is the reason why we need to be more vigilant on how we're utilizing our funding and our resources. So I just want to name that. And I want to thank Fatima and all of the organizations that have partnered with us Since I've been a city councilor, I know that you have my commitment in this work, and I remain a resource here in however I can be helpful. So thank you for showing up the way that you did today. That's it.

Thank you. You have two minutes. Followed by Reverend Gonzalez. Then you'll have two minutes. Then I'll close it out in one minute. Thank you.

Thank you for being the face of this city. Lamento mucho, llevo 20 años aquí. Muchos de los concejales que están aquí, los conozco, han ido a mi comunidad y me da tristeza. Thank you because you are the face of

I am ashamed of all the others that are supposed to be here and taking care of this meeting. I know most of you guys because I've been part of the community for over 20 years.

Es lamentable porque nuestra comunidad necesita ahora de ellos por el miedo, el temor, cuando no es por discriminarlos, pero ustedes tienen un privilegio que nuestra comunidad no tiene.

So it's not to, because I don't want to say anything like type of discrimination, but you guys have a privilege that our community doesn't have.

Now our community needs you. May you be those people who represent the community as true leaders, as parents. And as members of families who are here, who have come to work and fight and also contribute to this country.

So this is a time where you, as leaders of our community, the faces that represent us, to impound yourselves, guys, and fight for our community like heroes. Family, parents of us, doing the best for our community.

Respondan a los impuestos que nuestra comunidad paga.

I want you to respond to the taxes that our community pays.

Thank you. Wendy, will you finish? Reverend, you have two minutes.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Councilors, for being here. And thank you, Councilor Mejia, for all your work on this subject. I just wanted to actually respond to an earlier question about the fear in the community. And there is a lot of it. But one thing that... Also breaks my heart is when people trust law enforcement and then they end up in detention. because that does happen as well. Like one of the examples I cited, somebody called the cops because he was facing some violence in his home thinking that would help him, he ended up being deported. And so it's kind of, You're either living in fear or you're too trusting, but then you're suffering. So I just think the solution is we got to get rid of brick. We got to do away with the surveillance and information sharing. because either way, it's a bad situation.

Let me just say this. Let me thank everyone, our panelists, our public, Mojia, Councilor Breadon and Flynn and Pepén for coming to talk about issues that we don't talk about. One of the things that I think If nothing else came out of this hearing is that Boston has to watch Boston. And if Boston doesn't watch Boston, and we're so focused on Washington, The things that we're focused on in Washington will be happening in Boston. So as a city councilor, I believe that Boston has to keep an eye on Boston. Thank all of you for coming. We'll do it again and have a great weekend. Thank you to the central staff. We couldn't do it without you.

Thank you so much. Board 0-9 is now adjourned.