Sanctuary city madness: Democrats back down on protections for criminal immigrants

Over the past four years, Massachusetts has been overwhelmed by the influx of immigrants crossing the southern border. Last year, Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency, citing the rapid increase in migrant families seeking asylum and the state’s inability to adequately accommodate them.

Before the November 5 election, Healey was sending top deputies to the southern border to deliver the message that Massachusetts was no longer vacant. Healey, along with eight other Democratic governors, called for federal action, including a request for federal funding to support states that have spent billions of dollars on housing and feeding immigrants.

Massachusetts was hit hard by Democratic lawmakers who criticized Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey in opposition to dual immigration reform. Two years of unrelenting waves of immigrants continue to cost Massachusetts taxpayers between $1 and $2 billion a year – with no end in sight. Gov. Healey, himself, intends to manage Biden/Harris, saying: “This is not a problem that Massachusetts created.”

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Yet when aid is offered, Massachusetts Democrats not only reject that exemption, but also promise to fight it to protect illegal immigrants, even those accused of heinous crimes, at the expense of taxpayers and public safety.

Why? Because it involves President Trump. Anti-Trump Democrats, when it comes to meaningful deportations, will appear short-sighted, even in blue Massachusetts. Without question, Trump’s position on illegal immigration played a big role in why Trump improved his standing with voters in almost every city and town across Massachusetts.

Ignoring those results, after President Trump won, Healey reiterated his order that the State Police stand down if ICE requests cooperation in an arrest. violent migrants. According to Healey, he intends to use “every tool in the toolbox” to “protect” immigrants from any deportation efforts by the Trump administration.

Additionally, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has vowed to defy mass deportation efforts. And last week, the Boston City Council voted unanimously to confirm its status as a sanctuary city. Ironically, the next day, the DOJ charged twenty-five people with conspiracy to traffic fentanyl in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Nineteen targets were arrested in an ICE/DEA operation. Fourteen of the nineteen are illegal immigrants. Ten of these illegal immigrants were arrested in Boston the next day a 13-0 vote, confirming Boston’s sanctuary status. In fact, you can’t fix these things.

In November 2024, ICE arrested three people in Massachusetts on multiple charges related to child rape. Authorities have also arrested a Brazilian man accused of raping a young woman in a bar in Plymouth. Earlier this year, an immigrant was arrested at a Chelmsford shelter on charges of raping a 12-year-old girl and last year, ICE officers on Cape Cod located and arrested a Venezuelan national on the run from murder charges. When a disabled 15-year-old girl was raped by an illegal alien, Gov. Healey infamously said, “Things are going to happen.” In Massachusetts, it happens a lot.

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Last week, Jon Fetherston, former director of an immigrant shelter, explained that in Massachusetts, undocumented immigrants, including those accused of raping children, receive food stamps and government health insurance. Migrants are all given three meals a day from catering companies and are provided with essential items such as toiletries, diapers, strollers and baby wipes. Migrants also receive government-sponsored, same-day dry cleaning and taxpayer-funded Uber rides to appointments when needed.

He also revealed incidents of widespread violence, child sexual abuse, and rape in shelters across the province, including an incident where a father impregnated his 14-year-old daughter. Instead of alerting ICE and locking him up in the Middlesex County Jail, authorities sent the bad guy to neighboring Worcester, where he was placed in another taxpayer-funded shelter. Fetherston said a 16-year-old female student was also raped multiple times inside the shelter by a 29-year-old illegal immigrant.

Gov. Healey has a problem on his hands. More than 300 “serious incidents” have been recorded at federal immigration facilities this year, but officials refuse to provide more details about why police or firefighters responded or what crimes may have occurred. Police and emergency calls to hotels and shelters housing migrants have increased.

And yet elected leaders in Massachusetts vow to protect such violent criminals from legal deportation. By opposing Trump all the time and hiding their heads in the sand, Massachusetts Democrats like Healy, Warren and Wu have virtually ensured that we will be left alone to clean up – and pay for – the mess they and their fellow Democrats have created. If those actions lead to efforts to disperse immigrants and provide monthly allowances to hide from ICE, Gov. Healey and his colleagues could be guilty of violating Title 8, USC § 1324(a) of federal law (keeping or harboring an illegal alien).

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey stops to look at the Army beds set up in the gymnasium as State and local officials tour the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex. (Getty Images)

Massachusetts was among one of the most Democratic-leaning states to shift to the right this year; in Bristol County, a hotbed of working-class immigrants for decades, Trump narrowly defeated Harris and won the city of Fall River outright, the first time a Republican has done so in nearly 100 years.

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The impact of illegal immigration on Massachusetts has been unprecedented and even traditional blue state voters are realizing that something needs to change. Gov. Healey’s approval rating has dropped below 50%, indicating that a good showing alone will not secure him a second term in 2026.

If Massachusetts Democrats continue to sacrifice public safety, taxpayer dollars and commonsense for their party’s agenda, they may see voters electing Republicans to do the job instead.