Mayor Wu is going to Washington this month for a House Oversight Committee hearing that Congressional Republicans will no doubt use to hammer Boston and other Democrat-led cities like Chicago for their reluctance — or outright refusal— to actively aid federal authorities in immigration enforcement.

The moment will no doubt be fraught with high drama as Trump’s Capitol Hill cultists seek to score political points to please their master and, they figure, embarrass their partisan foes. But from this vantage point it seems that the stage is set for Mayor Wu, in particular, to shine a light on Boston’s superb and still-improving record on public safety. Boston belies the hackneyed and hollow Trump narrative that our cities are all warzones ravaged by unwashed waves of “invaders.”

In fact, as longtime Bostonians are keenly aware, by several key measurements our neighborhoods are currently safer than they’ve been since the Eisenhower administration.

Last weekend, Trump’s chosen deporter-in-chief, Tom Holman, recklessly took aim at our police commissioner and longtime Dorchester resident Michael Cox, whom he harangued from a podium in front of a far-right conservative conference in Virginia.

“I’m coming to Boston. I’m bringing hell with me,” Holman harrumphed.

Wu, in a WBUR interview a few days later, had Holman pegged for the blowhard he is when she surmised: “There’s a difference between bluster and legal authority.”

She added: “Boston follows the laws. We are going to keep doing what we do because we are in full compliance with the laws, which say that municipal officials and municipal police departments have authority over enforcing crimes at the local level in keeping everyone in their community safe. Immigration falls under the federal government and federal officials. It is not the purview of city officials to be involved in doing the job of the federal government and it’s not the federal government’s job to be involved in what should happen at the local level, either.”

That’s a spot-on summary that we expect the mayor to lean on in her testimony on the morning of March 5.

There may well be jurisdictions in this country that could use more federal law enforcement help in policing their streets. And to be clear, Boston has— and does— collaborate with federal agents— FBI, ATF, USPS police, etc.— routinely to arrest and detain violent offenders, drug traffickers, and other suspected criminals. What Boston— and other local law enforcement don’t do— is waste their time and precious resources “rounding up” immigrants living here without federal permission.

One reason Boston can rightly claim its spot among the nation’s safest and least dangerous cities is that our people know that they can trust law enforcement— and share information with them— to keep us all as safe as possible. That’s not just a Michelle Wu doctrine. It has been the posture of successive administrations of Boston leaders— Menino, Walsh, Janey, now Wu— who have a common-sense approach to policing and protecting a major US city in the context of a long-busted federal immigration system.

Trump’s henchmen, it seems, would prefer that we join their bogeyman approach. But we don’t need a lecture from the likes of Tom Holman or his boss, Elon Musk.

We have full faith and confidence that Mayor Wu will tell Congress—and everyone else who tunes in this month – that maybe the feds should take a page out of our playbook:

Here in the Hub of the Universe, we’re doing just fine without your “help.”

- Bill Forry