A divided Winthrop Town Council rejected a resolution expressing concern over the Trump administration’s aggressive criminal pursuit of foreign-born and ethnic minority residents, with councilors admitting the problem but fearing that speaking out would put more federal attention on the town.

The council tied 4-4 on the resolution, put forth by its vice president, Hannah Belcher, calling Winthrop a “welcoming and inclusive community” as an official response to the April detention by federal agents in Winthrop of two men suspected of being illegally in the US.

Three of the council’s members, including its president, Jim Letterie, specifically mentioned their fear of drawing attention to Winthrop during the current moment of potential threat from Washington.

“I don’t want a target on the town of Winthrop,” Mr Letterie said in voting against Ms Belcher’s proposal.

Another council member, Patrick Costigan, gave an impassioned address about the behavior of the Trump administration with regard to immigrants, saying the evidence is clear that the administration is aggressively pursuing immigrants without criminal backgrounds. Mr Costigan also praised immigrants for doing jobs that others will not do, and fretted in detail about the future of democracy in the US. The federal government has reached the point, Mr Costigan said, of threatening the basic rights of citizenship that Americans died in wars to protect.

Yet Mr Costigan then cited that extreme level of worry as a reason to reject the Belcher resolution. He noted that the Trump administration already is threatening the city of Boston with armed federal forces in response to Mayor Michelle Wu’s outspoken criticisms of ICE tactics. “My concern,” he said, “is this will bring even more attention to this town, when the federal government sends troops to Boston.”

Another council member, Suzanne Swope, expressed a similar sentiment. Ms Swope in the past has joined the protests against ICE tactics that some residents stage each week on the main bridge entering Winthrop. But now, she said, she wonders if Winthrop needs less attention to the matter. “In this particular climate,” she said, “I’d just rather stay in the background.”

Fastest-growing Hispanic population

The question of standing up is especially salient for Winthrop, given that the white-majority town has the second-fastest-growing Hispanic population in the entire state of Massachusetts, after only Nantucket, according to a Boston Globe analysis based on population shifts between 2018 and 2023. Winthrop also experienced the single-biggest decline in white population in that period among all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, the Globe data showed.

The arrests by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operating in Winthrop are among a series of actions that “create fear and anxiety among immigrant residents, disrupt families, and undermine the sense of security that all people deserve in their homes and neighborhoods,” Ms Belcher said in her proposed resolution.

The current Trump administration took office in January having promised a vigorous crackdown on illegal immigrants, accusing them of fueling crime in the US. But law enforcement data, as Mr Costigan noted, has consistently shown that immigrants in the US are less likely than others to commit crimes. The Trump administration, having promised in that context to deliver large increases in immigration arrests, has been found to be detaining suspected immigrants without regard to their criminal records, and sometimes based on their political expression.

Federal data show that ICE agents so far this year have arrested more than 100,000 people nationwide suspected of violating immigration laws, or about 750 a day, twice the average over the past decade. And about 70 percent of immigrants in ICE detention did not have criminal convictions upon their arrest, the federal data show.

In Massachusetts, about 78 percent of immigrants arrested during the current federal administration had no criminal conviction and nearly 39 percent had never been charged with a crime, according to a USA Today analysis of government data. The arrest rate in Massachusetts is 250 percent higher than it was a year earlier, the analysis found.

The Trump administration also has shown a willingness to use ICE powers for political objectives. ICE’s arrests in Massachusetts include that of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University graduate student held for several weeks after she wrote an article critical of Israeli actions in Gaza. And the Trump administration has promised to dedicate disproportionate armed federal attention to cities and states, including Massachusetts, that have relatively low levels of Republicans among their political leaders.

‘What we’re about’

One of the Winthrop Town Council members who voted in favor of the Belcher resolution, John DaRos, cited the Rumeysa Ozturk case as evidence that the Trump administration, by its own admission, saw the student as a target for detention because of her political expression.

“Is that what we’re about?” said Mr DaRos, a former college administrator, about the idea of arrests based on political views. “Not in this town.”

Before and after its vote, the Town Council took testimony from an array of residents, with many addressing the question of Winthrop’s openness to outsiders. One resident, Erin Barcellos, watched the April arrests in front of her house and pleaded for the council to push back against voices in the community suggesting that such federal tactics are warranted. “There is so much hate in this town, by a handful of people,” she said.

She was challenged on that view by Mary Crisafi, a Winthrop police officer who said she was speaking to the council only in her personal capacity as a resident of town. “I don’t think there’s a lot of hate in this town,” Ms Crisafi said. “There’s disagreements.”

ICE’s activities in Winthrop, Ms Belcher said in her proposed resolution, “have raised concerns about transparency, due process, and the impact on public trust and safety.”

The proposed resolution asked the Town Council to say that it “encourages local law enforcement to continue to prioritize public safety while continuing building strong relationships between all community members and our law enforcement officers.”

Winthrop’s police chief, John Goodwin, has said that his department monitors ICE operations in town but does not assist its agents other than help ensure that they do not arrest people they are not seeking.