To the Editor:
Every day, we see horrific violence by ICE agents across the country, including here in Massachusetts. This has hit pretty close to home, with Milford and Framingham being among the communities hardest hit by ICE in 2025. ICE’s actions are making all our communities less safe. Massachusetts residents have turned out in big numbers to protests and standouts demanding that our elected leaders do more leading and stand up to the cruelty and lawlessness of the Trump administration. There was a recent surge of ICE activity in Maine, and Massachusetts could be targeted next. We need to be ready for that now.
Many of our beloved immigrant neighbors are rightfully scared to leave their homes for fear of being detained by ICE. Parents are staying home from work and children are staying home from school. Others who are not immigrants but have black or brown skin, or an accent, or just find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time can all too easily find themselves in the middle of an ICE detention raid. Once someone is detained by ICE, the harrowing process has been known to move extremely quickly, with individuals transferred to Burlington, then to Plymouth, then to someplace like Louisiana – often over the course of a single day, before their families even know what happened, and before they have had a chance to secure legal representation. It is a dehumanizing experience.
While Massachusetts can’t stop everything ICE is doing, we must stop being complicit. Although many of us are proud of Massachusetts’s reputation as a liberal bastion, when it comes to protecting our immigrant communities, we have often lagged behind other states. States like California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington have all passed critical legislation to prevent state and local law enforcement from collaborating with ICE. Governor Healey and Beacon Hill legislators are finally coming around to the idea that the public wants to see action. But it matters that we pass legislation that truly meets the moment.
Beacon Hill should make it clear: state and local law enforcement should not be assisting ICE and should not be acting as ICE agents. Massachusetts law enforcement must never assist ICE in making civil immigration arrests (taking people into custody when no crime has been committed) or ask members of the public about their immigration status. ICE is pressuring local police departments to sign up for its 287(g) program, which turns street-level officers into ICE agents – Massachusetts should prevent this misuse of public safety resources from happening within our borders. Massachusetts is the only state with a Democratic governor and Democratic legislature to still have a statewide 287(g) agreement with ICE. Governor Healey can end this collaboration with a stroke of the pen.
I urge you to look up your local legislators and find out if they have supported similar legislation. You can find out if they are supporting the Safe Communities Act here. Other relevant legislation includes the Dignity Not Deportations Bill and the Black and Latino Caucus’s PROTECT Act. Call on them to build support with their colleagues behind robust legislation.
Becca Kornet
Medfield
