BOSTON — While ICE agents are conducting immigration sweeps across New England, Mayor Michelle Wu is spending $700,000 of your money to help illegal immigrants fight back.

Nearly a third of the city's $2.2 million "participatory budget" — a program where residents vote on how to spend taxpayer dollars — was funneled into two immigration programs: $400,000 for an immigrant legal defense fund and $300,000 for "career pathways" focused on language and employment services.

The legal defense fund will pay for lawyers to represent immigrants facing detention or deportation.

Read that again: Boston taxpayers are now bankrolling the legal defense of people in the country illegally — while the city simultaneously refuses to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

11-year-olds and non-citizens decided where your tax dollars go

Here's where it gets worse.

The "participatory budgeting" process that allocated this money wasn't limited to taxpaying adult citizens. Under Wu's rules, anyone living in Boston aged 11 or older could vote — regardless of citizenship status.

That means illegal immigrants themselves had a say in directing taxpayer money toward their own legal defense.

Just 4,841 people voted out of a city of 650,000. That's less than 1% of Boston's population deciding how to spend $2.2 million.

City Councilor Ed Flynn called the process "tone deaf, unserious, and wholly inappropriate."

"It's a lot of money for young people to be deciding where taxpayer money is going," Flynn said, arguing that children shouldn't be making decisions about the "economic stability of the city."

Renato Castelo, Wu's director of participatory budgeting, waved off the criticism, calling it an "exercise in democracy."

"It's just wonderful to see kids and youth being engaged," Castelo said.

Boston PD ignored EVERY single ICE request in 2025

The spending comes against a jaw-dropping backdrop: Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox admitted in January that his department ignored all 57 ICE detainer requests in 2025 — every single one.

That's a nearly four-fold increase from the 15 requests BPD ignored in 2024.

Cox cited the Boston Trust Act, the city's sanctuary law enacted in 2014, which prohibits local police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities on civil matters.

When Councilor Flynn tried to find out whether any of those 57 ignored detainers involved criminal cases — not just civil immigration matters — the City Council voted 9-4 to block his request.

Flynn had filed a "17F request" giving Wu's administration one week to hand over all communications between federal agencies and the Boston Police Department regarding detainer requests, cooperation agreements, and memoranda of understanding from January 2024 onward.

Nine councilors voted to bury it.

And they want even MORE money

The $700,000 isn't enough for some on the Council.

Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune — backed by Council President Liz Breadon and Councilor Enrique Pepén — has proposed a separate "immigrant emergency response fund" that would use city and private money to provide legal defense, family stabilization, and help with everyday bills for immigrants targeted by ICE.

Breadon said the quiet part out loud: "ICE seeks to create chaos in an attempt to prevent community members from responding effectively to their actions. The creation of a scalable emergency support fund for incidents will allow us as a city to be better prepared for when ICE strikes next."

When a sitting City Council president describes lawful federal immigration enforcement as an entity that "strikes" — like a natural disaster — you know where Boston's priorities lie.

Pepén went further, calling a February ICE arrest in Roslindale an "abduction."

The bigger picture

Let's add it up:

• $700,000 in taxpayer money for immigrant legal defense and career services
• 57 ICE detainer requests ignored by Boston Police in a single year
• A City Council that voted to block transparency on those detainers
• A new fund in the works to bankroll even more immigration resistance
• 11-year-olds and non-citizens given voting power over the city budget

All of this while the federal government is actively suing Boston over its sanctuary policies.

The DOJ lawsuit targeting the Boston Trust Act is still pending. Meanwhile, Wu is doubling down — using every lever of city government to shield illegal immigrants from federal enforcement.

Boston taxpayers are footing the bill. And most of them never even got a vote.