In the past, cities such as San Francisco and Chicago attracted the ire of conservatives for their liberal policies; Boston tended to fly under the radar, until now.

“Boston is a New England liberal city, which is maybe the quintessential elite university town,” said Matthew Baum, a professor of global communications and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “All of those things make it a natural source of antipathy for the current administration. Whatever you think about their policies, they’re directed on all the stuff that makes Boston, Boston. I think that goes a long way to explaining: Why Boston?”

The feud between the city and the White House kicked into high gear in late February, when Trump “border czar” Tom Homan declared he was “coming to Boston and I’m bringing hell with me.” Homan also criticized Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox for abiding by a Massachusetts law that dictates local police cannot keep immigrants detained for future deportation without a criminal warrant. Wu jumped in to defend Cox, saying he “has my complete confidence & support” in a post on social media. “We’re going to continue following & enforcing the laws to keep all Bostonians safe.”

Then, on March 5, Wu testified before Congress about Boston’s immigration policies. Her testimony included a fresh dig at Homan.

“Shame on him for lying about my city,” Wu said. “For having the nerve to insult our police commissioner, who has overseen the safest Boston’s been in anyone’s lifetime. Bring him here under oath, and let’s ask him some questions.”

A few weeks later on March 18, Homan kept his promise and came to Boston but did not make his presence in the city publicly known until after he left. According to federal officials, over a six-day operation across Massachusetts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 370 people. Of those arrested, 205 had “significant criminal convictions or charges,” according to ICE officials, who didn’t provide information on the other 165 people arrested. Homan, in a post on X, claimed the operation was necessary “because Massachusetts and Boston are sanctuaries that refuse to cooperate with ICE.”

Governor Maura Healey responded that Massachusetts is “not a sanctuary state, and Massachusetts law enforcement regularly partners with federal agencies and federal law enforcement to keep people safe.”

“Public safety is a major priority for me, and it should never be a partisan issue,” she added.

But political operatives on both sides of the aisle say the animosity between a progressive city such as Boston and the Republican-controlled federal government is a symptom of the country’s wider partisan divide.

“Trump is a master storyteller, and he understands intuitively that the best narratives have a good versus evil kind of setting,” said Doug Rubin, a Democratic strategist who has worked on campaigns for the likes of Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, and former Boston mayor Marty Walsh.

By calling out Boston, Trump and his allies are attempting “to pit the working class and working families against liberal elites. That’s a narrative that has worked for him successfully in both of his campaigns,” Rubin added.

Wendy Wakeman, a Massachusetts-based GOP strategist, said it was local politicians who courted Trump’s scrutiny, not the other way around. “I don’t think you can find a more radical mayor in the country than Michelle Wu,” she said. “I am not surprised that the reasonable policies of President Trump — which are enacted to protect Americans — are drawing his attention, and his administration’s attention, to Massachusetts.”

Still, Wakeman argued the Trump administration’s deportations are not politically motivated but instead are born out of practicality. “Why do bank robbers rob banks? It’s because that’s where the money is,” Wakeman said. “Why is Tom Holman coming to Massachusetts to arrest criminals from other nations living in the United States? It’s because they’re here.”

Homan has said repeatedly he targeted Boston after reading news reports about undocumented people committing crimes in the city.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

“Conservative media promotes this vision of American cities being overrun by illegal immigrants causing crimes,” said Republican strategist Alex Conant, who was communications director for current Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential bid. Outlets including Fox News, Breitbart, and Daily Wire have all recently covered immigration issues in Boston.

“Trump has always been preoccupied by the state of American cities,” Conant said. “I think Boston is a great American city that he sees as in decline, not unlike Chicago, San Francisco, New York, or D.C. And part of that is he has an image of cities filled with illegal immigrants committing crimes and he has made removing immigrants an administration priority.”

Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat who represents parts of California’s Bay Area and has frequently parried Trump’s jabs at his district, recommends Boston officials simply do not back down: “Shrinking is the worst thing you can do because then he’ll know that he owns you, and he’ll just keep coming back to get more. That’s the only language a bully understands, is strength.”

Baum, the Harvard professor, argued that immigration policy alone isn’t what’s driving the wedge between Boston and the White House.

“It seems like the core economic engines of this region are under aggressive assault right now,” he said, referencing the administration’s efforts to cut biomedical research funding and demands on elite universities. The former, he said, is being targeted because “post-COVID, there’s been a notable decline in trust in science and medicine, disproportionately among Republicans.” Meanwhile, universities are being sanctioned because of “the perceived overreach of progressives on hot-button cultural issues, with the epicenter being elite colleges,” he said.

For the Trump administration, the likely strategy behind cracking down on Boston “is to shoot a warning shot across the bow at other cities,” Baum said.

Among those interviewed for this story, though, there was consensus the tension is unlikely to abate any time soon.

Wakeman expects Massachusetts will remain in conservative crosshairs because so many of the state’s elected officials have “signaled that they’re at war with Donald Trump.” Plus, any blowback will have little practical effect on Trump executing his agenda.

“If the state of Massachusetts had some juice — in other words, a congressman or a senator who was important for future votes — then perhaps somebody might be able to run interference,” she said.

Conant shared a similar assessment that “this is a fight with few political consequences” for the president since “there’s not a lot of Trump voters in Boston.”

Tal Kopan of Globe staff contributed reporting to this story.

Julian E.J. Sorapuru can be reached at julian.sorapuru@globe.com. Follow him on X @JulianSorapuru.

There are certain jobs you don’t want to get, no matter how prestigious they might seem at first, because once you’re picked, it’s only a matter of time before you’re either disgraced, exiled, imprisoned, or even dead.

For instance, boss of the Gambino Crime Family, anchor of the CBS Evening News, or head terrorist for Hamas, Hezbollah or ISIS.

And to those dead-end jobs, you can add this one:

Latest poster gal for DEI politics in the City of Boston.

Am I right, Tania Fernandes Anderson, the next convicted felon member of the Boston City Council?

She is just the latest in a long line of uber-woke frauds who were the subject of innumerable slobbering agitprop puff pieces in regime-controlled Boston media. She follows in the footsteps of, among others:

Monica Cannon-Grant.

Rachael Rollins.

Dianne Wilkerson.

Claudine Gay.

Kendra Lara.

Tania seemed to have it all going for her. So many “firsts” – first (former) illegal alien, first African-born, first Muslim on the City Council.

And now she becomes the first African illegal alien Muslim to ever be convicted of a felony while serving on the Boston City Council.

Welcome to the DEI Hall of Shame, Tania.

All these crooked, corrupt flame-outs follow pretty much the same pattern. They’ve all been coddled and pampered by guilt-ridden rich white liberals all their lives to the point that they assume everything will be handed to them, as long as they scream “Racism!” loud enough.

Every one of these race grifters has taken the scams to new levels, but TFA absolutely tried to shoot the moon.

Think about Julia Mejia, Boston city councilor but a mere runner-up in these sweepstakes. She too is a first – “the first Afro-Latina to sit on the Boston City Council.”

Anyway, Julia Mejia’s mother was “undocumented.”  That’s a resume-enhancer in modern Boston politics. But wait, Tanya can top that – she herself came into the country to go on welfare as an illegal alien.

She didn’t become a US citizen until 2019, although by then she’d enjoyed the usual Democrat career trajectory of welfare masquerading as jobs – counselor, service coordinator, outreach manager, intervention provider, etc. etc.

Whatever any of her rivals for Victim of the Year could claim, Tania can top.

Ayanna Pressley, city councilor turned Squad Congresswoman, married a jailbird who did 10 years for drug crimes.

But Tania beat Ayanna easily on the marriage front – she got hitched to a first-degree convicted murderer. And for a bonus, her bloodthirsty husband’s first name is Tanzerious, which is so much more street than Ayanna’s ex-con husband, Conan Harris.

In these DEI sweepstakes, you need to have a memorable quote that everyone always remembers.

For Julia Mejia, the first Afro-Latin, etc., it’s this message she delivered on social media:

“For those of you who are wondering if I am using drugs, answer is absolutely not!”

As for Tania, who can ever forget her immortal shriek at City Hall after she was forced to fire her sister and her son from their $140,000 worth of hack jobs because of the evil white man’s anti-nepotism laws:

“What the bleep does a black woman have to do on this bleeping Council to get some respect as a black woman?”

She was just honoring the tradition of her community – the Boston community that she flopped into for a free lifetime ride, not the one that she really comes from, which is Africa.

Tania is going to prison for grabbing $7,000 cash in a bathroom at City Hall – a kickback from one of her other relatives that she hired and then gave a “bonus” to.

In that, Tania was following in the footsteps of one of her predecessors as Roxbury city councilor – Chuck “Superfly” Turner, who grabbed a grand and was lugged to Club Fed. Another racist frame!

As a female crooked DEI pol, Tania’s crime mimicked ex-Sen. Dianne Wilkerson from, where else, Roxbury. She was recorded on an FBI camera stuffing $1,000 into her bra.

They’re all from the 02120 zip code. And they all end up with a different kind of number, from the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Wilkerson’s was 21757-038. Turner’s was 80641-038.

Like Tania, Wilkerson was continuing a tradition in her Second Suffolk Senate District – being a jailbird. She was the third convicted pol in a row to serve as the solon from Roxbury. Two other thugs, Bill Owens and Royal Bolling Sr., had swapped the seat back and forth for decades before she gave Roxbury yet another of its perennial “fresh starts.”

The name Kendra Lara is now fading from political memory. She retired from the Boston City Council after a brief and shining moment when she was the poster gal for Boston DEI Politics.

It was 2023 and she crashed into a house in JP while driving an unregistered, uninsured, uninspected vehicle with no driver’s license.

She’s lucky she wasn’t charged with impersonating an illegal alien? And did I mention that Councilor Lara’s son, who was injured, is named Zaire. Good name! Almost as good as Tania’s second son (not by Tanzerious). He goes by Shah Mohammed.

Kendra could have been a contender. After all, her c.v. included a stint as “Director of Radical Philanthropy” at some place. She was “anchored by a socialist vision.”

But Kendra was soon gone, much like Marilyn Moseby. Remember her? She was a Dorchester girl, moved to Baltimore and became the top prosecutor in that failed city before she became… a convicted felon.

METCO Marilyn went down on mortgage fraud and perjury raps. Dorchester Proud!

But the queen, I think, remains Monica Cannon-Grant. She had the BLM franchise to steal in Boston. And she remains at large – the new date for her federal trial on corruption charges involving more than $1 million in fraud and thievery is Oct. 25.

Everyone mentioned above has gotten innumerable wet kisses and sob stories from the ladies who lunch who now dominate the Boston “news” media. But Monica Cannon-Grant was the capo di tutti fraudi.

She was the Boston Globe’s “Bostonian of the Year.”

Boston Magazine dubbed her “the best social justice advocate in Boston?”

The Boston Celtics called her “a hero among us.”

Tania was plenty crooked, but she’s never risen to the level (or the weight) of Monica Cannon-Grant. The Globe will never name her Bostonian of the Year. The month, maybe, but not the year.

So farewell then Tania Fernandes Anderson. In her first campaign, she pledged “affordable housing” for her constituents. Now she’s gonna get some, complements of the Bureau of Prisons.

Write when you get your BOP number, Tania, and once you’re incarcerated, maybe you can arrange for some conjugal visits with your better half and fellow jailbird, Tanzerious Anderson.

Look on the bright side. After a few months, you’ll get sprung and Trump will deport your shiftless Third World rear end right back to Africa where you belong.

Tanzerious, on the other hand, is doing life without parole.

Boston Proud!

Originally Published: April 10, 2025 at 3:03 PM EDT