Massachusetts’ Democratic Gov. Maura Healey has branded the “Operation Patriot 2.0” ICE raids being carried out by Donald Trump’s administration in her state a “power grab” and “political theater.”
The new enforcement mission began on Sunday after May’s original “Operation Patriot” raids in the Bay State yielded the arrest of 1,500 undocumented migrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“Look, I’ll say this,” Healey said on MSNBC’s The Weekend on Sunday. “I’m a former prosecutor. I’m a former attorney general. I’ve said many, many times, including to the Trump administration, that I support, as attorney general and now as governor, everything we can do on public safety.
“But what we have seen from ICE and from the administration really isn’t about public safety, it’s about political theater. It’s about a political power grab and an attempt to intimidate.”
A DHS spokesperson rejected her claims, saying in a statement: “ICE launched ‘Patriot 2.0’ to target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens living in the state of Massachusetts, following the success of Operation Patriot in May.”
Trump’s Justice Department sued Boston and its Democratic mayor Michelle Wu on Thursday over the city’s “sanctuary” protections, arguing its laws were being exploited by dangerous criminals who should be deported.
“Sanctuary policies like those pushed by Mayor Wu not only attract and harbor criminals but also place these public safety threats above the interests of law-abiding American citizens,” the DHS spokesperson said.
“ICE is arresting sex offenders, pedophiles, murderers, drug dealers, and gang members released by local authorities.”
Like Healey, Wu has been a vocal critic of Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown, telling Boston public radio in June that ICE’s tactics “are the opposite of what makes communities safer, and no one’s buying that line, that ‘we’re just here to help make everyone safer.’
“We know what safety looks like in the city of Boston.”
She has since responded to the administration’s lawsuit, similar to those it has launched against other blue states and cities like New York, New Jersey and Los Angeles, by saying in a statement: “This is our city, and we will vigorously defend our laws and the constitutional rights of cities, which have been repeatedly upheld in courts across the country. We will not yield.”
Trump’s aggressive push to round-up undocumented migrants this year has already brought him into conflict with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and, most recently, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, all of whom are Democrats.
Over the weekend, the president risked inflaming tensions with Chicago by posting an AI-generated meme of himself as Lt. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) from Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now (1979) with the catchphrase: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning…”
He was subsequently asked whether he intended to go to war with the Windy City and answered: “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities. We’re going to clear them up so they don’t kill every five people every weekend. That’s not war. That’s common sense.”
When it was put to him by a reporter that he was targeting Democrat-run Chicago and Boston rather than Republican-run cities with higher crime rates like Memphis and St Louis, he replied: “Do you know how many people were killed in Chicago last weekend? Eight. Do you know how many were killed in Chicago the week before? Seven.
“Do you know how many people were wounded? Seventy-four people were wounded. You think there’s worse than that? I don’t think so.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed last month that the U.S. now has 1.6 million fewer undocumented migrants on its soil than when Trump took office in January, a figure that has been disputed.
