Renee Good – shot three times and killed this month in Minneapolis by a masked Homeland Security agent, who then called her “a fucking bitch”.

George Retes, a US citizen and Army combat veteran, arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California and held for three days, allowed no communication with family or lawyers, and then released – without explanation, charges, or apology.

Rümeysa Öztürk – a Tufts graduate student snatched off the street in Somerville by a team of government agents because she had the temerity to write an op-ed in the university newspaper criticizing the school’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.

Incidents like these that are the result of the Trump administration’s efforts to rid the country of people it deems unworthy are profoundly alarming – but often distant – to many us who are comfortable in our status.

But every citizen of the Commonwealth is indirectly supporting and benefitting from this effort. The 2026 Massachusetts budget anticipates collecting more than $25 million from the federal government for housing ICE prisoners at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility — the only facility in the state currently contracted with ICE to detain people. 

We need to own the consequences of this budgetary — and moral – decision. The intuitive reaction is that this is blood money. We must refuse to lease beds in our correctional facilities to ICE.

Despite the visceral appeal of such a stance, we need to take a more nuanced view. Prohibiting ICE from holding prisoners in Plymouth County might actually harm the very people we are trying to protect. That said, if we are going to let ICE detain people here and take their money, at the least, we must not treat the funds like they are just another neutral source of revenue.

There’s a compelling argument that no part of the state government should make ICE’s job easier: Collaborating with immoral action is never justified. We should, under this thinking, immediately cancel the contract with ICE.

How the country addresses immigration is, admittedly, not an easy issue. We need immigrants – and have long been a place where those from other countries sought to a build a new, better life — and we also need secure borders. I know how hard striking this balance can be.