Somerville mayor on Trump 'I guess any idiot can run for office'

SOMMERVILLE, Mass. — A local mayor is not happy after Donald Trump said that he would no longer fund sanctuary cities, like Somerville.

"I thought if you were a billionaire, you had to have some sense or have some knowledge - I guess any idiot can run for office," Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone told FOX25's Sharman Sachetti.

At a speech Thursday in Phoenix, Trump was joined by Maureen Maloney, whose son Matthew Denice was dragged to death by an illegal immigrant behind the wheel of a truck in 2011.

FOX25's Sharman Sacchetti talked with Maureen Maloney, Denice's mother.  She said she wants people to know what happened to her son could happen to anyone.

"None of us are immune to this. I just don't want anybody else to go through the nightmare that my family's going through and that those other families are going through," she said.

Nicolas Guaman, who is from Ecuador, is serving 12 to 14 years for the crime. It sparked national debate over why Massachusetts wasn't, at the time, taking part in Secure Communities, a federal program designed to deport dangerous illegal immigrants.

"We're all doing this to try to make it a safer country so that Americans aren't being killed by illegal aliens because every one of these deaths are preventable," she said.

A sanctuary city is a nonlegal term for a city that has policies designed not to prosecute people solely for being an illegal immigrant.  Somerville has been a sanctuary city for years.

"Maybe his campaign slogan should be "Make America Hate Again,'" Curtatone told FOX25.

The mayor said he’s not worried about Trump defunding sanctuary cities because Somerville won’t change who it is.

Cox Media Group