The Massachusetts GOP (MassGOP) issued scathing remarks toward Democrats Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu after U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the arrests of three illegal immigrants on child rape charges.

Healey and Wu have both been vocal about their opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants once he returns to the Oval Office in January.

This month, Healey vowed that her state police will “absolutely not” cooperate with the expected mass deportation effort by the incoming Trump administration, warning that she will use “every tool in the toolbox” to “protect” residents in the blue state.

Wu also took a stance against Trump during an interview on Sunday, saying her city will not cooperate with the incoming administration’s looming mass deportation operation despite the region seeing a number of illegal immigrants with criminal charges getting released back onto the streets.

ICE ARRESTS 3 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN MASS.: 2 CHARGED WITH CHILD RAPE, 1 CONVICTED OF SAME CRIME IN BRAZIL

Even after the two leaders made their positions on not working with Trump on immigration public, ICE on Wednesday announced the arrests of two illegal immigrants charged with forcibly raping children in Massachusetts and the arrest of a third individual who was convicted of raping a child in Brazil before fleeing to the U.S. and going into hiding after being caught and released at the U.S. border in 2022.

In a news release Thursday, MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale called the positions taken by Healey and Wu “appalling and disgusting” and accused them of prioritizing the appeasement of the most radical elements of their political base over the safety of residents.

“Parents across the Commonwealth are horrified that individuals charged with such serious crimes are allowed to roam free because local authorities refuse to work with ICE to remove these criminals from our streets,” Carnevale said. “Massachusetts residents have had enough. These harrowing incidents are becoming far too frequent. When our state’s top leaders go on television to proclaim that Massachusetts will protect illegal immigrants and refuse to cooperate with ICE, they send a dangerous message that invites more of this behavior into our communities. By doing so, they are complicit in the chaos that follows.”

DEM GOVERNOR THREATENS TO USE ‘EVERY TOOL’ TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST TRUMP-ERA DEPORTATIONS

(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/File)

“It’s time for Democrats to put politics aside and work with federal authorities to end this alarming pattern in Massachusetts,” she added.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Healey’s office said, “As part of immigration enforcement, the Governor believes individuals who commit violent crimes like those alleged here should be deported.”

Wu’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the matter.

The three suspects arrested by ICE were identified this week as 21-year-old Mynor Stiven De Paz-Munoz of Guatemala, 42-year-old Billy Erney Buitrago-Bustos of Colombia and 41-year-old Alexandre Romao De Oliveira of Brazil.

‘SANCTUARY’ CITY MAYOR VOWS SHE WILL DEFY TRUMP’S MASS DEPORTATION PUSH: ‘CAUSING WIDESPREAD FEAR’

Mynor Stiven De Paz-Munoz was arrested by ICE in Massachusetts after allegedly raping a child by force in February 2024. (ICE)

ICE said Wednesday that De Paz-Munoz entered the U.S. on Sept. 24, 2020, near Eagle Pass, Texas, before getting released by U.S. Border Patrol with a notice to appear before an immigration review judge.

He was later arrested in western Massachusetts by Great Barrington police on Feb. 29, 2024, for rape of a child by force, rape of a child, and indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or older.

Despite ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Boston office lodging a detainer with the police department, De Paz-Munoz was released on bail. He has since been taken into custody.

Buitrago-Bustos was admitted into the U.S. on May 4, 2016, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, though he failed to leave under the terms of his visa.

TRUMP CONFIRMS SUPPORT FOR MAJOR STEP IN MASS DEPORTATION PUSH TO ‘REVERSE THE BIDEN INVASION’

Alexandre Romao De Oliveira was arrested in Massachusetts. (ICE)

After his arrest in October 2023, ERO Boston lodged an immigration arrest with the Great Barrington Police Department. Later that month, Buitrago-Bustos was arraigned in Southern Berkshire District Court and held without bail. The charges were elevated to Berkshire County Superior Court on March 18, which honored the immigration detainer and released him into custody of ERO Boston on Nov. 15 after he posted bail.

Romao De Oliveira is a foreign fugitive convicted of raping a child in Brazil.

He was convicted in the First Criminal Court of Jaru, Rondônia, Brazil, on Feb. 10, 2022, and sentenced to serve 14 years behind bars.

But according to ICE, Romao De Oliveira fled Brazil before he could serve his sentence. On April 16, 2022, Romao De Oliveira entered the U.S. near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, without admission by an immigration official and was released from custody after being served a notice to appear before a DOJ immigration review judge.

(Alex Wong/Getty Images/File)

MassGOP spokesperson Logan Trupiano told Fox News Digital that State Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and House Minority Leader Brad Jones have filed legislation to close loopholes created by a 2017 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Decision that barred state courts from cooperating with ICE detainers. As a result, the ruling facilitated the release of illegal immigrants accused of crimes on bail rather than honoring federal immigration detainers.

“Filed a month ago, this critical legislation addresses the public safety risks stemming from the decision,” Trupiano said. “We urge the Democratic supermajority in the legislature to put political posturing aside, prioritize public safety and pass this important measure.”

The immigration issues stretch across the U.S., and on Wednesday, House Republicans pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra for an answer about how the U.S. lost track of thousands of unaccounted migrant children. He was also asked about fumbling the vetting process that allegedly allowed some minors to be sent to gang members and sometimes even a strip club.

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report.

I realize that South Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace is an attention-hungry partisan, trying to make a name for herself as a culture warrior by demonizing the first transgender woman to be elected to Congress.

And I understand that giving Mace’s proposal to ban transgender women from women’s bathrooms in the Capitol any oxygen is probably just what she wants.

But I also don’t think it’s wise to allow her fear-mongering and demonizing to go unanswered.

Earlier this month, voters in the state of Delaware did something momentous: They elected Democrat Sarah McBride, a transgender woman, to the House of Representatives. At 34, McBride, a member of the Delaware state Senate since 2021 and a former spokesperson for the national Human Rights Campaign, will be one of the youngest members in Congress. Focusing on healthcare, reproductive rights and economic issues, she beat her Republican opponent by a hefty 16 percentage points.

Since then, Mace and her colleague Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have been waging a petty war against McBride, aided and abetted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who announced Wednesday that transgender people in the Capitol and House office buildings will be allowed to use only those bathrooms that correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth.

Also on Wednesday, Mace introduced a resolution that would ban trans women from using women’s bathrooms and locker rooms in federal buildings. Never mind that trans women have been using women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill and in the White House and Pentagon for years without issues, according to writer and trans activist Charlotte Clymer.

“I have PTSD from the sexual abuse I have suffered at the hands of a man,” Mace told Scripps News. “And I will tell you just the idea of a man in a locker room watching me change clothes after a workout is a huge trigger and it’s not OK to make and force women to be vulnerable in private spaces.”

Of course, we all want to be safe in private and public spaces.

“But the logic and coherence there is somewhat lacking,” said Andrew Flores, an associate professor of government at American University. “According to the data analysis, there is not a systematic relationship between allowing trans people to use bathrooms according to their current gender and experiences of predation. The correlation is just not there.”

In 2018, Flores, who is also a distinguished visiting scholar at UCLA Law’s Williams Institute, and his colleagues studied crime rates before and after cities in Massachusetts outlawed gender discrimination in public accommodations, i.e. bathrooms and locker rooms. They compared the rates in those cities with Massachusetts cities that had passed no such protections.

“We found nothing,” he told me — no change in victimization rates for a crime that is already vanishingly rare. “At the end of the day, we were surprised by how many agencies had such trouble producing data for us because they couldn’t find it.”

A 2017 survey by CNN found similar results when it reached out to 20 law enforcement agencies in states with anti-discrimination policies covering gender identity. “None who answered reported any bathroom assaults after the policies took effect,” the network reported.

To assume that a trans woman is a sexual predator is not just outrageous and wrong, it’s the same sort of thinking that conflates homosexuality with pedophilia. Most child sex offenders identify as heterosexual or bisexual men.

Anyway, I don’t know what’s more perverse — the fixation some Republican women have on being watched in bathrooms and locker rooms, or the way they readily stand by their male colleagues in the GOP, even if they are found liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a department store dressing room and boast about grabbing women’s genitals, allegedly have sex with underage teenagers or pay settlements to women who have accused them of rape.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that in a private House GOP conference meeting, Greene “indicated that she’d fight a transgender woman if she tried to use a woman’s bathroom on the House side of the Capitol.”

This possibility certainly tracks with reality. As many people can guess, and research shows, transgender people are far more likely than cisgender people to be assaulted in public spaces as a result of their gender identity.

Still, those facts did not stop Greene from telling reporters last week that “America is fed up with the trans ideology being shoved into our face. Women have been the victims of this garbage for long enough.”

I would suggest that Greene and Mace are shoving “transgender ideology” into their own faces.

As McBride herself put it in a social media post, “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. … Each of us were sent here because voters saw something in us that they value.”

And of course, Mace’s mean-spirited proposal has apparently caused a backlash. “Men that want to use women’s restrooms are threatening to kill me over this issue,” she told the cable network NewsNation.

Now she can pose as a martyr. The skeptic in me thinks she was hoping for that all along.

Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is urging the Biden administration to halt a $1.25 billion “Digital Equity” program, calling it unconstitutional for using race-based criteria to expand broadband access.

“I urge you to withdraw the unlawful [Notice of Funding Opportunity] NOFO and halt issuing Program grants before you cause real harm,” Cruz wrote to Alan Davidson, the assistant secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Thursday morning. “NTIA’s use of racial classifications, as set forth in the NOFO, does not serve a compelling governmental interest.”

The letter comes as Republicans push back against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as they gear up for the incoming Trump administration. Under the soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, such programs like the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program could be examined as government waste.

“Any source of government waste is in scope for DOGE,” a Ramaswamy spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKER RANTS ABOUT ‘THE WHITE MAN’ DURING A HEARING ON THE DISMANTLE DEI ACT

The letter criticizes NTIA’s guidance for the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program, as Cruz claims it violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, lacking evidence of racial discrimination in internet access and failing to provide clear metrics for its race-based criteria.

The program was a key initiative under the Digital Equity Act, which was authorized by President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. It is the third of three digital equity programs established by the act.

Cruz asserts that the program requires grant applicants to prioritize “Covered Populations,” a category that explicitly includes racial and ethnic minorities in the program. He argued the approach includes impermissible racial discrimination, arguing that the federal government cannot use racial classifications without demonstrating a compelling interest and “narrowly tailored” measures. 

RAMASWAMY OUTLINES DOGE’S VISION

President-elect Donald Trump announced Elon Musk, left, and Vivek Ramaswamy, right, would be leading the Department of Government Efficiency on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Getty Images)

“The NOFO provides no evidence racial minorities face discrimination in accessing the internet, let alone specific instances of discrimination that NTIA is seeking to address,” Cruz wrote. “And it does not attempt to make any claim that this discrimination is necessary to avoid a prison race riot.”

Cruz added that “the NOFO does not define ‘minority,’ making it impossible to determine whether it is underinclusive, but in any event, it is overinclusive because it includes anyone who falls into some racial group, without any determination that that specific group has faced discrimination in access to broadband.”

ELON MUSK, VIVEK RAMASWAMY TO LEAD TRUMP’S DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY

Congress is racing to be ready to execute the recommendations of President-elect Donald Trump’s new DOGE commission. (Getty Images)

Cruz, the ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee, urged the NTIA to respond by Dec. 12, either by confirming the withdrawal of the guidance or by providing a detailed explanation of how it complies with constitutional requirements.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the NTIA for comment.