Current News

/

ArcaMax

Boston-area ICE surge leads to 'bold-faced' lies from Massachusetts pols: Border czar Homan

Lance Reynolds, Boston Herald on

Published in News & Features

Border czar Tom Homan says Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu should be thanking the Trump administration for taking illegal aliens charged with assault and rape off the streets instead of spreading falsehoods.

Homan and the Bay State leaders remain in a verbal sparring as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues an operation that the feds are dubbing “Patriot 2.0.”

In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Healey accused ICE of parking outside a church at Boston College during a Spanish mass over the weekend to “intimidate” attendees. Homan responded, saying the governor’s claim is a “bold-faced lie.”

Under President Trump’s mass deportation push, the feds are allowed to target illegal immigrants at churches, schools and courthouses. Homan told reporters in Washington shortly after Healey’s television appearance that ICE isn’t conducting operations at Boston-area churches.

“Shame on Gov. Healey and Mayor Wu,” the border czar said outside the White House. “Shame on both of them. They should be calling the White House, thanking Trump, thanking ICE for making the community safer. Instead, they go on TV and lie about ICE and make these accusations.”

Healey said in her national TV interview that the ICE vehicle was parked outside of Spanish mass at Saint Ignatius of Loyola Parish in Chestnut Hill on Sunday, but Archdiocese of Boston and Boston College spokespeople say that the van was spotted on Saturday.

“ICE agents were parked outside on the street,” the governor said. “Why are they parked outside of a church on a Sunday where people are going to worship and pray? It’s because they’re doing this to intimidate and to create fear.”

This all comes as hundreds of immigration agents from across the country are in Boston and other towns and cities in the Bay State for Patriot 2.0, an operation in which the Herald partially witnessed during a ride-along on Saturday morning.

In response to the ICE surge, Mayor Wu has spoken out against the operation, saying the city is “prepared to take legal action at any evidence” that ICE has violated Constitutional, state or local laws.

 

Healey’s comments on Tuesday morning came after she said in a national TV interview on Sunday that her office was not notified of the surge ahead of time and called the operation a “political power grab and an attempt to intimidate.”

While speaking with reporters in D.C., Homan highlighted four alleged illegal immigrants ICE has arrested in Greater Boston over the past few days: one from Guatemala, charged with aggravated rape and assault and battery; another from Colombia, charged with aggravated assault on a pregnant victim; a third from the Dominican Republic, facing drug trafficking charges; and a fourth from Guetemala, charged with assault and battery on a child.

“This is what ICE is doing across the country,” Homan said. “They’re targeting the worst of the worst and making this country safe again.”

Healey and Wu aren’t the only ones expressing outrage over the feds’ renewed immigration enforcement operation. Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne has also made her frustration known.

“On Friday night and midday Monday, respectively, what appeared to be ICE agents rolled up to the front of the high school & City Hall to take selfies, we’re guessing on the taxpayers’ time and dime,” Ballantyne said in a statement that the City of Somerville posted on its Facebook on Monday. “Meanwhile, while federal employees were busy with a pitiful attempt to troll or intimidate our community — and our kids! — we were busy at work finishing up our final school maintenance checklists to start the new school year, getting ready for the democratic process of our local election, and packing supplies for the annual senior picnic.”

“We look forward to the day when our federal government takes a cue from hard-working cities like Somerville,” she added, “and puts its resources into working for the people, not against them.”

________


©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus