Waltham, MA – Leading Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Mike Kennealy provides comment on Governor Healey’s Executive Action banning ICE from courthouses:
“Yesterday, Maura Healey claimed Massachusetts is not a sanctuary state.
Today, Maura Healey announced a series of executive actions that definitively make Massachusetts a sanctuary state.
Maura Healey says she is filing legislation that would keep federal law enforcement out of court houses. If a criminal illegal immigrant is in a court house, in handcuffs, in state or local law enforcement custody, Healey would rather that they be released onto the street so that the Feds have to apprehend them in the community. That is an absurd contradiction.
If Governor Healey wants to keep ICE agents off our streets, the only way to achieve that is by being a responsible partner: honor ICE detainers for criminal illegal immigrants, and when a criminal illegal immigrant is arrested by state law enforcement, work with federal authorities to transfer custody safely and securely through our law-enforcement agencies.
Governor Healey oversaw government-run migrant shelters where more than a thousand incidents of sexual assault, child abuse, gun and drug smuggling, and other violent acts occurred under her watch. She told the public these shelters were safe, that residents were vetted with criminal background checks. That was false.
When a child was sexually assaulted in one of these facilities, Governor Healey infamously and coldly dismissed it by saying, ‘from time to time, things will happen.’ When a father impregnated his own daughter inside a Healey-run shelter, the administration’s response was not accountability – it was giving him an Uber ride to another shelter.
There is no individual or institution in Massachusetts more responsible – or more morally culpable – for violence against migrant families than Governor Healey and her administration. She is the last person anyone should trust, consult, or listen to on immigration or migrant safety. Massachusetts families and migrant families deserve leadership that protects them, not leadership that puts them in danger.”
###
