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During the last four years, Massachusetts has been overwhelmed by the migrant surge coming across the southern border. Last year, Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency, citing the rapid increase in migrant families seeking shelter and the state’s inability to adequately accommodate them.
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Before the November 5th election, Healey was sending top deputies to the southern border to deliver a message that Massachusetts had no more vacancies. Healey, along with eight other Democratic governors, pleaded for federal action, including asking for funding to support states that had spent billions of dollars on housing and feeding the migrants.
Massachusetts was hit so hard democratic lawmakers condemned Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey for opposing bipartisan immigration reform. Two years of unrelenting waves of migrants continue to cost Massachusetts taxpayers between $1 and $2 billion annually – with no end in sight. Gov. Healey, herself, took aim at the Biden/Harris administration, stating: “This is not a problem that Massachusetts created.”
BLUE STATE FACES SPIKE IN MIGRANT SEX CRIMES AS TOP CITY PLEDGES RESISTANCE TO TRUMP DEPORTATIONS
Yet when relief is being offered, Massachusetts Democrats are not only rejecting that relief, but they’re also pledging to fight it to protect illegal migrants, even ones accused of abhorrent crimes, at the expense of taxpayers and public safety.
Why? Because it involves President Trump. Democrats fighting Trump, when it comes to reasonable common-sense deportations, will prove short-sighted, even in blue Massachusetts. Without question, Trump’s position on illegal immigration played a major role in why Trump improved his standing with voters in practically every city and town across Massachusetts.
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Ignoring those results, after President Trump won, Healey restated her order that the State Police stand down if ICE asks for cooperation in apprehending violent migrants. According to Healey, she intends to use “every tool in the toolbox” to “protect” migrants from any deportation efforts made by the Trump administration.
Additionally, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu vowed to defy federal mass deportation efforts. And just last week, the Boston City Council voted unanimously to reaffirm its status as a sanctuary city. Ironically, the following day, the DOJ charged twenty-five people in a fentanyl trafficking conspiracy in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Nineteen targets were arrested in an ICE/DEA operation. Fourteen of the nineteen migrants are illegal. Ten of those illegal migrants were arrested in Boston the day after the 13-0 vote, affirming Boston’s sanctuary status. You literally, can’t make this stuff up.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu vowed to defy federal mass deportation efforts.(AP Photo/Mary Schwalm, File)
In November 2024, ICE arrested three individuals in Massachusetts on multiple charges related to child rape. Authorities also arrested a Brazilian national who allegedly raped a young woman behind a bar in Plymouth. Earlier this year, another migrant was arrested at the Chelmsford shelter on charges of raping a 12-year-old girl and just last year, ICE officials on Cape Cod located and arrested a Venezuelan national on the run from murder charges. When a disabled 15-year-old girl was raped by an illegal migrant, Gov. Healey disgracefully declared, “Things will happen.” In Massachusetts, it’s happening way too much.
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Last week, Jon Fetherston, a former director at a migrant shelter, explained that in Massachusetts, undocumented migrants, including those accused of child rape, receive food stamps and government health insurance. The migrants are all given three meals a day from catering companies and provided essential items such as toiletries, diapers, strollers and baby wipes. Migrants also received state-paid, same-day dry cleaning and taxpayer-funded Uber rides to appointments when needed.
He also exposed incidents of widespread violence, child sexual assault, and rape at shelters throughout the state, including an incident where a father impregnated his own 14-year-old daughter. Instead of alerting ICE and detaining him in a Middlesex County jail, authorities shipped this heinous individual to neighboring Worcester County, where he was placed in another taxpayer-funded shelter. Fetherston stated that a 16-year-old female student was also raped multiple times inside the shelter by a 29-year-old illegal migrant.
Gov. Healey has a crisis on her hands. More than 300 “serious incidents” have been recorded at state-run migrant facilities this year, but officials refuse to provide further details about why police or firefighters responded and what crimes may have occurred. Calls for police and emergency services to hotels and shelters housing migrants have skyrocketed.
And yet the elected leaders of Massachusetts are vowing to protect such violent criminals from being lawfully deported. By opposing Trump at every turn and burying their heads in the sand, Massachusetts Democrats like Healy, Warren and Wu have virtually guaranteed we will be left alone to clean up – and pay for – a mess created by them and their fellow Democrats. If those actions lead to attempts to disperse migrants and offer monthly stipends to hide them from ICE, Gov. Healey and her co-conspirators could be guilty of violating Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324(a) of federal law (harboring or concealing an illegal alien).
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey pauses to look at the Army cots set up on the gym floor as State and local officials toured the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex.(Getty Images)
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Massachusetts was among one of the Democratic-leaning states that shifted to the right this year; in Bristol County, a hub of working-class immigrants for decades, Trump nearly defeated Harris and outright won the city of Fall River, the first time a Republican has done so in roughly 100 years.
The impact of illegal immigration in Massachusetts has no party affiliation and even traditional blue state voters realize something must change. Gov. Healey’s approval rating has slipped below 50%, indicating that virtue-signaling alone won’t guarantee her a second term in 2026.
If Massachusetts Democrats continue to sacrifice public safety, taxpayers’ dollars and commonsense for their political party’s agenda, they may see voters elect Republicans to do the job instead.
Here’s a brief look at 10 of the more notable mansions found in the Ocean State, listed in order of their values as assessed by their municipality.
Journal Staff
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Rhode Island is offering state employees up to $200 in reimbursement for costs related to refiling their taxes.
The reimbursement follows a series of payroll glitches and botched W-2 forms caused by a new state accounting system.
Problems with the new system included underpayments, overpayments, and incorrect employer information on tax documents.
The McKee administration is offering up to $200 to any state employee who incurred any additional expense in filing, and then having to refile, their taxes because of a series of botched paychecks and W-2s.
How did we get here? On April 15, also known as Tax Day, Patrick Crowley, the president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, called on the McKee administration to reimburse public service workers who had to refile their taxes because of a series of several payroll glitches.
On May 4, Thomas Verdi, the acting director of the Department of Administration, sent state workers a “Dear Colleagues” email that said:
“We recognize that the W-2 corrections released by the state may have resulted in additional tax preparation costs for individuals who had to amend their tax returns.
“To assist with this expense, the state will provide a one-time reimbursement for up to $200 for tax preparation and filing costs an employee incurred to amend a federal and/or state tax return directly related to the W-2Cs issued by the State of Rhode Island.”
More: How the new, $99M state payroll system put RI at ‘significant risk’
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The latest in a litany of financial issues with state’s payroll system
The Department of Administration has not yet responded to Journal inquiries about the projected cost to the state.
But the list of well-publicized problems goes on and on.
They have included underpayments, overpayments, botched W-2s that misidentified their employer as the “Rhode Island Umbrella Company,” and a problem with Health Savings Account contributions where the employer and employee contributions were reported separately, instead of combined and will require new W-2Cs to go out to impacted employees. according to Department of Administration spokeswoman Karen Greco.
And about $220,000 in union dues inadvertently wound up in employee paychecks instead of being withheld from them.
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Most, though not all, of the glitches were attributed to problems with the state’s buggy new $99 million finance and accounting system known as Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP, which launched in late 2025.
A Department of Administration spokeswoman told The Journal on April 15 that “significant progress has been made to ensure employees who required paycheck corrections are made whole,” but Crowley said his members “shouldn’t pay for mistakes they didn’t make.”
“That is why we are calling on the state of Rhode Island to reimburse state workers who have incurred expenses for refiling their taxes or may have to do so before problems are corrected.”
Olivia DaRocha, a spokeswoman for Gov. Dan McKee, said at that time that the administration was looking at potential ways to support impacted employees.
The email from Verdi to state workers included an “affidavit” for state workers to sign to verify how much, if anything, additional they had to pay to amend their tax returns.
MONTPELIER — Vermont Humanities announced the winners of the Vermont Book Awards for outstanding literature in 2025 on Saturday at a cocktail and dessert celebration in Montpelier, attended by almost 200 readers, writers, and supporters of literature and the humanities.
The winners in each of their respective categories were Sasha Hom for “sidework” (Fiction), Helen Whybrow for “The Salt Stones” (Creative Nonfiction), Carlene Kucharczyk for “Strange Hymn” (Poetry), and Mima Tipper for “Kat’s Greek Summer” (Children’s Literature).
The celebration was held in the chapel in College Hall on the Greenway Institute campus. The room was full of writers, including previous winners of the Vermont Book Awards. The keynote speaker was Vermont Poel Laureate Bianca Stone, who is the author of multiple books of poetry, including “The Near and Distant World,” which came out in 2026, and “What is Otherwise Infinite,” which won the 2022 Vermont Book Award in poetry.
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The winners of the Vermont Book Award each received a prize of $1,000 and a specially commissioned art object created by Vermont artist Bess French, a nationally and internationally exhibiting sculptural artist, whose work is inspired by the natural world and found objects.
Vermont Humanities Executive Director Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup also formally announced Vermont Reads 2026: “Charity and Sylvia,” by former Vermont Cartoonist Laureate Tillie Walden. Based on the true story of an early 19th century couple in Weybridge, Vermont, Kaufman Ilstrup said, “Here at Vermont Humanities, we can’t think of a better way to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States, than to uplift this gentle story of two women who grew up and came of age with our Country.”
The Vermont Book Awards are annual prizes for outstanding literature in Vermont, presented by Vermont Humanities. The event was supported by Phoenix Books, the Vermont Arts Council, the Norwich Bookstore, Montpelier Performing Arts Hub, Greenway Institute, Susan Z. Ritz, and the Vermont Department of Libraries.
