Boston, MA
An American dream morphs into a nightmare – The Boston Globe
John Culleton recovered, miraculously, and moved back to Ireland, while Punter Culleton defied all medical expectations and lived a long, purposeful life before he died in 2016 of complications from a surgery designed to improve his quality of life as a quadriplegic.
For all the tragedy visited upon the Culletons in Massachusetts, Seamus Culleton loves Boston, loves the local community in Wakefield that’s embraced him, and loves Americans so much that last year he married one, Tiffany Smith, determined to make his life here forever.
After he and Tiffany got married, Seamus applied for a Green card to legalize his status. By entering that process, he was given a work permit that allowed him to work legally in a country where he had previously worked in the shadows.
All was going well, and he was in the final stages of the Green card process last Sept. 9, when ICE agents staked out the Home Depot in Saugus. After buying some materials for his plastering business, Seamus noticed some agents following him. They pulled him over and arrested him.
They allowed him a single phone call to Tiffany.
“He said, ‘Don’t panic. ICE picked me up.’ I wanted to know where they were bringing him, but ICE wouldn’t say,” Tiffany told me.
That one phone call was it for a week. It’s a tactic that ICE has perfected under the Trump administration, refusing Seamus’ requests to call his lawyer and his family, while they quickly moved him out of Boston, first to Buffalo, then to Texas.
ICE likes Texas because the state is full of judges who are more up on the Ten Commandments than the Constitution, except they always seem to skip over that pesky thing Jesus Christ said about loving your neighbors.
“They want to get you out of Massachusetts as fast as they can, so you won’t have support,” or judges that might challenge the legality of their tactics, Seamus told me over the phone from the detention center in El Paso where he’s been held for nearly five months.
The conditions are appalling, he said. More than 70 men are crowded into a large room, so tensions are high. Detainees fight over the small portions of food they are afforded, Seamus said.
“It’s a modern-day concentration camp, with filth and sickness and disease,” he said. “The people watching over us are inhumane. They are told to leave their humanity at the door, and they do so. It’s a nightmare.”
It is, he says, a nightmare with a purpose: to break down the detainees so they will sign documents consenting to be deported.
ICE claims that’s just what Seamus Culleton did.
Seamus and his lawyer, Ogor Winnie Okoye, say that’s a lie. They say someone in the government forged Seamus’ signature and found a judge in Texas who agreed with ICE even though the judge had no foundation or expertise in handwriting analysis.
Seamus said he has signed papers while in custody, to contest his deportation, not to consent to it.
Oyoke, who has spent her career sticking up for the little guy against an all-powerful government, told me that the government’s treatment of Seamus Culleton is the saddest, most pointless she has encountered.
“Seamus is a model immigrant,” she said. “He did everything right. The only thing he did wrong was not depart the US after 90 days.”
If you enter the US under the visa waiver program, as Seamus did, and overstay your visa after 90 days, you typically waive your right to fight deportation. But, Oyoke said, there is a statutory exception to that.
“If you marry a US citizen, as Seamus did, you are entitled to submit an application for a Green card,” she said, “and in the past ICE would give you the chance to legalize your status.”
But that was before Donald Trump rode into the White House on a platform of rounding up millions of immigrants who don’t have legal status. To quickly assemble a paramilitary force willing to execute his plan, Trump dropped any semblance of ICE being a legitimate, well-trained law enforcement agency. The government reduced training from six months to 47 days, eliminating age limits and educational achievement, and offering sign-up bonuses of up to $50,000 to quickly fill the ranks with tens of thousands of agents who are obsessed with filling quotas, not arresting dangerous criminals.
If Seamus Culleton had $15,000 for fees at his disposal, and the ability to donate $1 million to the US treasury, he would be eligible for a Trump Gold Card to legalize his status. Check out the residency program for rich people. It’s either laughable or Kafkaesque. Take your pick.
The idea that Americans are safer because Seamus Culleton is locked up in squalor and facing deportation is a joke. The idea that some poor American lost out on a plastering job because Seamus Culleton built a company out of nothing is preposterous.
And those two terms — a joke, and preposterous — perfectly describe an immigration policy that is built on performative cruelty.
Oyoke visited Seamus in El Paso.
“It is the most horrendous place,” she said. “When I went to see Seamus, he looked jaundiced. They don’t let them spend enough time outside. It’s cruelty. Pure cruelty.”
Tiffany’s coworkers at the Stoneham Animal Hospital set up a GoFundMe page, to help make up for Seamus’ lost income, as Tiffany keeps payments up on his truck and other financial obligations.
On Monday, I asked the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to comment on Seamus Culleton’s case. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement Tuesday, did not address the forgery claims. She said Seamus Culleton illegally overstayed his visa and was given full due process rights after he was detained.
“He was offered the chance to instantly be removed to Ireland but chose to stay in ICE custody, in fact he took affirmative steps to remain in detention,” McLaughlin said, a statement that is at odds with ICE’s claims that Seamus Culleton signed documents saying he was consenting to deportation.
McLaughlin also said any claims of “subprime conditions at ICE facilities are FALSE.”
Back in Ireland, Seamus’ sister, Caroline, has spent sleepless nights trying to find out if her brother is okay. She worries about his mental health as much as his physical health.
She doesn’t believe for a moment that her brother signed papers consenting to losing his wife, his home, his business, his American dream.
“Seamus can be stubborn,” she said. “I’m his sister. I know him. He didn’t sign those papers.”
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.
Boston, MA
A crowd scientist is helping the Boston Marathon manage a growing field of 30,000-plus runners
BOSTON (AP) — Running the Boston Marathon is tough enough without having to jostle your way from Hopkinton to Copley Square.
So race organizers this year turned to an expert in crowd science to help them manage the field of more than 32,000 as it travels the 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) through eight Massachusetts cities and towns — some of it on narrow streets laid out during Colonial times.
“There are certain things that we can’t change — that we don’t want to change — because they make the Boston Marathon,” said Marcel Altenburg, a senior lecturer of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain. “Like, I’m a scientist, but I can’t be too science-y about the race. It should stay what it is because that’s what I love. That’s what the runners love.”
The world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon, the Boston race was inspired by the endurance test that made its debut at the inaugural modern Olympics in 1896 — itself a tribute to the route covered by the messenger Pheidippides, who ran to Athens with news of the Greek victory over the Persians in Marathon.
After sharing the news — “Rejoice, we conquer!” — Pheidippides dropped dead.
Organizers of the Boston race would prefer a more pleasant experience for their runners, even as the field has ballooned from 15 in 1897 to as many as 38,000 to meet demand for the 100th edition in 1996. It has settled at around 30,000 since 2015.
As the race grew, it tested the limits of the narrow New England roads and the host cities and towns, which are eager to reopen their streets for regular commutes and commerce as quickly as possible.
“It would be kind of great someday to be able to grow the race a little bit more,” race director Dave McGillivray said. “The problem with this race is that it’s about two things: time and space. We don’t have either. … So, we’re trying to be innovative.”
That’s where Altenburg comes in.
A former German army captain who runs ultra marathons himself, Altenburg has worked with all of the major races, other large sporting events, and airports and exhibitions that tend to attract large crowds on ways to keep things safe and flowing smoothly.
For the Boston Marathon, which draws hundreds of thousands of spectators in addition to the runners, his models allow him to run simulations that help him see how the race might play out under different conditions.
“We have simulated the Boston Marathon more than 100 times to run it once for real. That is the one that counts,” Altenburg said in a telephone interview. “They gave me, pretty much, all creative freedom to simulate more waves, simulate more runners and — within the existing time window — they allowed me to change pretty much anything for the betterment of the running experience.
“And then we checked every aid station, every mile, the finish, every important point, (asking): Is the result better for the runner? Is that something that we should explore further?”
The most noticeable difference on Monday will be that the runners are starting in six waves — groups organized by qualifying time — instead of three. The waves, which were first used in Boston in 2011, help spread things out so that runners don’t have to walk after the start, when Main Street in Hopkinton squeezes to just 39 feet wide.
Other, less obvious changes involve the unloading of the buses at the start, the placement of the water and aid stations, and the finish line chutes, where runners get their medals, perhaps a mylar blanket or a banana, and any medical treatment they might need.
“For an event that’s as old as ours, 130 years, it allowed us to be a startup all over again,” said Lauren Proshan, the chief of race operations and production for the Boston Athletic Association.
“The change isn’t meant to be earth-shattering. It’s to be a smooth experience from start to finish,” she said. “It’s one of those things that you work really, really hard behind the scenes and hope that no one notices — a behind-the-curtain change that makes you feel as if you’re just floating and having a great day.”
Shorter porta potty lines would also be nice.
“What I loved about working with the BAA was how aware they are of what the Boston Marathon is. And they won’t change anything lightly,” Altenburg said. “So it was very detailed work from literally the moment the race last year ended to now. That we check every single option. That we really make sure that if we change something about this historic race, then we know what we’re doing.”
The BAA will look at the feedback over the next three years before deciding about expansion or other changes.
“Fingers crossed, hope for the best, but we’ll get feedback from the participants,” McGillivray said. “And they’ll let us know whether or not it worked or not.”
But keeping the course open longer isn’t an option. And the route isn’t going to change. So there’s only so much that crowd science can help with at one of the toughest tests in sports.
“I can talk. I’m a scientist. I just press a button and it’s going to be,” Altenburg said. “But the runners still have to do it.”
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports
Boston, MA
From across Boston they flock to play for Latin Academy boys’ tennis, a co-op of 29 schools – The Boston Globe
“I’ve done a lot of different things in my life, but there’s no question in my mind that the youth development aspect of what I’ve done with kids and tennis in Boston is the most important work I’ve ever done,” said Crane, who has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to youth tennis.
Once upon a time, Crane served as a sports journalist for the New York Post, the defender general of Vermont, and the executive director of the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission.
He has been the head boys’ tennis coach at Latin Academy since 2009, and last season led the Dragons to their first Division 3 semifinal appearance in program history.
This season, the Dragons are trying to repeat that success, and are doing so with players from five Boston high schools (Latin Academy, O’Bryant, Josiah Quincy Upper, East Boston, and New Mission).
Sophomore Mayfre Moreta, a New Mission student, has never crossed paths in the school hallways with his doubles partner, Gio Waterman, who attends Latin Academy, but the pair still managed to rally from a set down to clinch the deciding No. 2 doubles point in last year’s D3 quarterfinals.
“I think [that win] speaks to our identity as a program,” said Waterman. “It’s so nice to play with all these new guys from other city schools. We share that bond of representing the city of Boston.”
Along with the unique co-op structure, Crane runs a no-cut program that carries roughly 35 kids ranging from seventh to 12th grade every year who vary from beginners to experienced tournament players.
“We don’t cut because we want to teach kids from all over the city how to play the game,” said Crane. “We want to give them a sport that they’ll play for the rest of their lives.”
Mateus Washington, a Latin Academy senior, is in his sixth, and final, year with the program. Although Washington has dueled the state’s top players at No. 1 singles this season, he is just as proud that he gets to lead his teammates every day.
Matthew J Lee/Globe staff
“It’s really cool to see how the seventh-graders of this generation look so much like I did in seventh grade,” said Washington, who has posted a 3-3 record this year. “It’s super eye-opening and enriching to be a part of their development.”
Crane recognizes that the team’s makeup is unique and oftentimes difficult to manage.
“Logistically, it’s difficult. The kids are coming from all over the city, and they can’t all show up at the same time because their schools get out at different times,” said Crane.
But above all, Crane is thankful he can give his kids — many of whom come from low-income situations — the chance to play tennis, as well as offer them summer jobs at Sportsmen’s, Franklin Park Tennis Association, and other tennis facilities around the city.
“What motivates me the most is getting to know these kids, building relationships with them, and figuring out how I can be of help to them. I want to help them grow, help them succeed on and off the court, and help them get ready for the rest of their lives.”
▪ Emily Cilley has yet to lose a match as the head coach of the Swampscott girls.
In Cilley’s first year with the program, the Big Blue (4-0) have put last season’s second-round loss to Dover-Sherborn in the rearview mirror.
Key to their success have been sophomore stars Nikki Carr and Ginger Gregoire. Carr has been dominant at first singles, posting a 4-0 record without dropping a set, and Gregoire has been a great option at second singles, logging a 3-1 record and securing the deciding 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 victory in the season opener against Bishop Fenwick.
“They are both very disciplined players who understand the balance between being cautious and being patient,” said Cilley. “Their technical skills are on point, and they aren’t intimidated by the person across from them.”
The Big Blue’s strong start has catapulted them to the top of the Northeastern Conference. They’ll look to continue their unbeaten streak against St. Mary’s next Saturday.
▪ The girls of Central Catholic are off to their best start in program history.
The Raiders boast a 6-0 record after taking down Lowell 5-0 on Saturday morning. The win was their fifth sweep of the season, with the only non-sweep coming in a 4-1 victory over Notre Dame (Tyngsborough).
Morgan Bateman has looked unstoppable at second singles, as she is yet to drop a set, and Ella Asmar has been just as impressive at third singles, posting an undefeated record.
Although Haley Wolters was responsible for the only loss by a Raiders player this season, she has logged impressive victories at first singles, such as a 6-2, 6-3 win against Chelmsford and a 6-1, 6-1 triumph over Lowell.
The Raiders have a chance to extend their winning streak to nine with matches against North Andover, Lowell, and Haverhill on the horizon, before they clash with undefeated Andover on April 30.
Webb Constable can be reached at webb.constable@globe.com. Follow him on X @webbconstable.
Boston, MA
Practice Report: Bruins Have Last Skate in Boston Before Leaving for Buffalo | Boston Bruins
“It is a division team, we’ve played them enough to know kind of what they’re about. They’ve had a great season. They’re a high rush team, a lot of speed and a lot of skill. It is going to be a fun matchup,” Lindholm said. “It is a fun challenge for us, coming in a little bit as an underdog and prove people wrong.”
Lindholm has also been quarterbacking the second power-play unit, which is primed to feature James Hagens. The 19-year-old forward signed his entry-level contract on April 8 and played in the final two games of the regular season. The B’s, however, did not get on the man advantage in either game, so Sturm has yet to see Hagens on the power play outside of practice. The coach thinks it is one of Hagens’ best assets, though.
“He doesn’t have to play or make special plays. He has some really good players on that unit. As long as he’s going to play fast and keep it simple – I think that is something that might be different from college and NHL,” Sturm said. “I think it will be fine because Buffalo, they will come, they pressure hard. So you don’t want to be surprised. You want to be quick, you want to be fast. That’s something that has to be in his mind.”
Hagens has been skating on the third line with Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov, and that stayed the same in Saturday’s practice. The three youngsters will all be playing in their first NHL postseason.
“Every night you have to give it your all. You have to give everything you possibly have. This is playoff hockey – you want to win every single game like always. Nothing changes, but there are a lot higher stakes,” Hagens said. “This is something you dream of. Something you grow up watching and praying that you could be in the moment one day and be playing in. Now that it’s reality, it’s something that is really surreal.”
After having a whirlwind start to his pro career, it has been helpful for Hagens to get full practices in with the group.
“It’s been great to be able to be out there, practice with these guys. Not only to learn the systems but to be able to talk to teammates, get feedback from coaches,” Hagens said. “Just the repetition, being able to do reps, try to learn day by day.”
The energy is palpable for Boston, but the team knows the work has just begun.
“Everyone is equal in this room. We’re a tight-knit group here, we’re all good buddies…Just go out there and play with that joy that we have in the locker room,” Lindholm said. “It is a really serious time of year, but I think within this room here, just go out there and enjoy, too. Play for each other – I think that’s how you win this time of year.”
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