Chief Justice of the Trial Court Heidi Brieger described for lawmakers the more informal relationships that she said she and Court Administrator Thomas Ambrosino have had “at a very deep level” with various leaders of ICE in New England.
Immigration
Posted inEducation
‘Climate of fear’: Student enrollment declining amid Trump’s immigration crackdown
Overall, public schools across Massachusetts — which has become a target of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration — lost over 15,000 students from fall 2024 to fall 2025, according to state data released in January. That brings total enrollment in the state to its lowest level in over three decades.
Posted inState Government
Competitiveness fears weave through budget hearings
“There is almost perfect correlation between expensive states and outmigration, and we are a very expensive state,” testified Eric Paley, Gov. Maura Healey’s secretary of economic development, at a budget hearing in in Barnstable.
Posted inOpinion
A three-pronged strategy for supporting our immigrant neighbors
Forces opposing justice and equity have always existed, and when they get louder and push harder against what we know is right, history shows we must not only hold our ground, but we must be prepared to do more.
Posted inImmigration
It’s anyone’s guess when Beacon Hill will agree on an immigration response
Three weeks after both Gov. Maura Healey and the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus offered separate roadmaps for action, it’s still unclear how or when House and Senate Democrats will proceed amid national pressure to respond to ICE raids.
Posted inImmigration
‘The brave people of the Twin Cities made a call’
Protestors called for the state to end all collaborations with ICE, and to take further steps to protect immigrant communities.
Posted inExplainer
What Mass. can and can’t do about ICE
Even as Gov. Maura Healey took aim at ICE during her State of the Commonwealth speech last week, the bottom line is that Massachusetts officials have more power to deplore federal immigration actions than to stop them.
Posted inOpinion
What ICE is doing is abhorrent. But here’s why canceling the state contract to house its detainees might not be the right thing to do.
As with all policies, it is important not to make decisions from afar. We must listen to people who are actually impacted.
Posted inOpinion
Why are we looking to deport ambition?
These students are tomorrow’s nurses, engineers, teachers, artists, and entrepreneurs. Driving them from classrooms is a moral failure, but also an economic one: It makes the next generation smaller, less educated, and less able to compete in a global economy that depends on talent and drive. We are shooting ourselves in the foot.
Posted inEducation
Mass. faces grim reality of fewer international students
Massachusetts’s schools have recruited higher proportions of international students than colleges and universities almost anywhere else because of a demographic decline and the comparatively high cost of higher education here. But even before the second Trump administration, there were signs the bottom was falling out.
Posted inOpinion
Funding was the start – now we need to build out systems to help our immigrant workforce learn English
IN POLITICS, timing can be everything. When the Boston Foundation’s Latino Equity Fund released “The ROI of ESOL,” documenting the economic returns of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) […]
Posted inPolitics
Mass. begins 2030 Census prep amid national redistricting fights
With mid-decade redistricting fights erupting elsewhere, Massachusetts officials are ramping up their preparations for the 2030 Census as they grapple with new housing development and concerns about community trust.
Posted inOpinion
A nation of immigrants imperiled
In both of his terms in office, Donald Trump has taken aim at each of the principal ways that people from other countries can become naturalized United States citizens.
Posted inState House News Service
Feds blame ‘sanctuary policies’ in Milford teenager’s immigration arrest
A Milford High School junior was not the target of a federal immigration enforcement investigation and his arrest was the byproduct of “sanctuary policies,” federal officials said.
Posted inImmigration
As ICE touts island arrests, Healey highlights ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’
Gov. Maura Healey at an unrelated press conference Wednesday raised questions about due process and a lack of information about those arrested.
Posted inCourts
Lawyers challenge customs officials’ constitutional authority to deport Brown Medicine kidney doctor
An amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts Monday contends that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers who refused entry to Alawieh at Boston Logan International Airport lacked the constitutional authority to deport her back to Lebanon.
Posted inEducation
Tutwiler: Immigration chill leading to “extended absences”
According to the state’s top education official, some Mass. schools have reported “extended absences” for students as a result of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.
Posted inOpinion
With arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk, Trump is pulling out all the stops to divide us. It won’t work.
They know that the more that Americans are preoccupied by false enemies and straw men, the more vulnerable we will be to their campaign to dismantle our democracy, strip us of our rights and our privacy, and funnel wealth from everyday Americans to the billionaire class.
Posted inOpinion
Immigrants can make us rich, if we let them
In almost every geographic context, immigrants with both high and low levels of education are more likely than non-immigrants to open businesses. Unfortunately, we are not taking full advantage of this economic potential.