Even before last year’s election, David Blair thought that the climate surrounding immigration in the U.S. had gotten “ugly.”
He’s worked with refugees for several years through a Monadnock-area nonprofit but felt the need to cast a wider net.
“Immigrants in general, not just asylum seekers, were going to need more assistance, more support, more solidarity, I would say, from the community,” Blair said.
So, he and other community members decided to form the Monadnock Immigrant Solidarity Collaborative. Its first meeting this past winter drew more than 100 people. Since then, the group has offered trainings on legal rights for immigrants, as well as the rights of hospitals, businesses and others in case of a raid. It’s also offered family support and tries to track local activity by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Now, other communities across the state are following suit.
Activists are forming eight so-called “sanctuary communities,” including the Monadnock collaborative, as a grassroots effort that seeks to monitor and document ICE activities and advocate against what they call “police-state tactics” by the Trump administration.
“We’re supporting our immigrant neighbors. We’re insisting that our government follow the law,” Blair said. “We’re not breaking any laws, we’re not obstructing justice, but we’re insisting that due process be observed.”
The effort has already elicited opposition from state Republicans, who say they’re keeping a close watch on activists and are prepared to punish anyone who crosses the line.
“Threats to law enforcement or efforts to obstruct them will not be tolerated in New Hampshire,” Gov. Kelly Ayotte said in a press release. “If you disrupt law enforcement activity, you will be prosecuted.”
State Rep. Joe Sweeney, the deputy majority leader of the Republican caucus that controls the House of Representatives, warned undocumented immigrants in his statement: “If you are here illegally, you are not welcome in New Hampshire,” he said. “You cannot hide. We will find you and deport you.”
Ayotte signed a law earlier this year banning cities and towns from adopting so-called “sanctuary” and “welcoming” policies designed to keep local police from assisting federal immigration enforcement. In passing that law, Republicans have said sanctuary policies present a threat to the public by allowing, in Ayotte’s words, “dangerous criminals” into communities.
Most people detained by ICE and border patrol have no criminal convictions.
Of the nearly 60,000 people detained in the U.S., less than a third have been convicted of a crime, according to the most recently available federal data. Roughly 15,000 detainees have pending criminal charges, and more than 27,700 people were designated as “other immigration violators.”
As Republicans keep a close watch, activists said they have no intention of breaking the law. They do intend to do everything in their legal rights to protect others from what they view as unlawful actions by ICE.
Bob Baker, an immigrant and a lawyer who lives in Columbia, said federal agents arresting and detaining people off the streets — sometimes while masked and in unmarked vehicles — denies those people of due process in the courts.
Towns and cities in New Hampshire can no longer instruct their local police not to cooperate with ICE, and while lawsuits are an option, Megan Chapman, a human rights lawyer from the North Country town of Albany, said that path of resistance could jeopardize state or federal funding. Individual community members can still put pressure on institutions, she said.
“By forming a citizens’ movement, No. 1, we make it not about towns and cities and authorities,” Chapman said. “It’s about human beings and citizens saying, ‘We don’t accept this.”
The sanctuary communities plan to host trainings and come up with ways to share information across the network. In the meantime, though, not all of the groups have been active for the past year like in the Monadnock region. Many of them are still figuring it out.
“We’re going step by step. We’re not highly sophisticated. We’re just relatively ordinary citizens,” said Larry Brown, an organizer from Lancaster. “This is what citizen movements are about. They grow, and they turn here and there. We don’t know where this is going. We don’t know … if we’re going to be successful, whatever that might mean. This is truly the David and Goliath moment in our history.”
Update: Nov. 11, 11:55 a.m. — The headline has been updated to clarify that sanctuary communities primarily seek to monitor and document ICE activity rather than track it.