President-elect Donald Trump is ready to pounce on the nation’s illegal immigration crisis, with Chicago first on the list for an ICE sweep, sources confirmed to the Herald, with Boston not be far behind.
Sources told the Herald on Saturday that the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement will conduct its first raid under the Trump administration in Chicago on Tuesday. New York and Miami will follow soon after, according to multiple news reports.
Boston and other Massachusetts sanctuary cities are expected to be a top-five target for the Trump administration to conduct mass arrests of illegal immigrants, sources said, depending on how the rollout progresses.
Trump has promised tackling illegal immigration will be a top priority when he regains office on Monday, pledging to oversee the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.
“There’s going to be a big raid all across the country,” incoming border czar Tom Homan said on Fox News Friday night. “Chicago is just one of many places.”
“ICE is finally going to go out and do their job,” he added. “We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE and let them go arrest criminal aliens. That’s what’s going to happen.”
The anticipated raids come as Massachusetts grapples with increasing homelessness and violent incidents at taxpayer-funded emergency assistance shelters.
Gov. Maura Healey proposed dramatic changes to the system last week, aiming to make it harder for arriving migrants to access the shelters, designed for homeless families and pregnant women.
Jon Fetherston, who served as director of an emergency shelter in Marlborough in 2023 and 2024 and filled in on some shifts at a Revere site, welcomed the development that raids could soon happen here.
Fetherston, a conservative podcaster and an Ashland Housing Authority commissioner, has blown the whistle on crime that has occurred at migrant shelters for months,
“It is great that we are going to reestablish law and order in Massachusetts,” Fetherston told the Herald. Women and children are at risk because we don’t know the vetting process of some of these migrants who’ve proven to be criminals. If ICE is going to remove criminals from the street, every Massachusetts resident should be happy about it.”
Others expressed outrage.
The Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network started during the first Trump administration. Annie Gonzalez, a volunteer, said she’s been “fighting to free people from immigration detention and shut down ICE ever since, raising money for bonds and supporting people directly.
“We are scared and furious and also we know we are stronger together,” Gonzalez told the Herald in a statement. “We will keep accompanying our community members at ICE check-ins, court appearances, and fighting for everyone in immigration jail in New England.”
National news reports have indicated that the Trump administration will be targeting “sanctuary” cities and towns that limit cooperation with federal immigration officials, specifically areas with large immigrant populations initially.
Healey, who has vowed that Massachusetts isn’t a sanctuary state, briefly touched on immigration in her State of the Commonwealth speech Thursday, largely sticking to long-used talking points on the issue: that Congress and the federal government have failed to pass comprehensive immigration reforms.
But the governor, who sued Trump nearly 100 times as attorney general, also pledged to work with the incoming administration.
“I’ve said I agree anyone who does violent acts should be held accountable and be deported,” she said. “I’ve also said that immigrant families who’ve lived here, who are working here, who pay taxes here, who are raising children here deserve a path forward.”
The Bay State’s eight sanctuary cities – Boston, Somerville, Northampton, Amherst, Cambridge, Concord, Lawrence and Newton – have reaffirmed their pledges to not assist in ICE rounding up illegal immigrants, since Trump’s win in November.
Other towns and cities across Massachusetts have very similar policies but have stopped short of declaring a sanctuary commitment including Natick and Medford, both of which adopted ordinances within the past month.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the national Center of Immigration Studies, said the raids are “greatly needed to go after illegal aliens who have assumed they are safe from consequences in sanctuary cities (and) to show sanctuary politicians that they cannot stop immigration enforcement.”
“There is no shortage of targets in the Boston area since the promise of guaranteed shelter has been a magnet,” Vaughan told the Herald.
Homan has said that while illegal immigrants with criminal records will be the top priority for the Trump administration, no one in the country illegally will be safe.
Officials have highlighted how they must follow a 2017 ruling from the state Supreme Judicial Court that extends to local law enforcement, preventing arrests and detentions from being based on a federal civil immigration detainer.
Detainers request that local or state law enforcement “maintain custody of the noncitizen for a period not to exceed 48 hours beyond the time the individual would otherwise be released.”
Jack Lu, an adjunct criminology and justice studies professor at UMass Lowell and former 16-year Massachusetts Superior Court judge, said Trump is “entitled to conduct immigration policy as he wishes within the confines of the law.” He hopes “this discretion is exercised with care, discretion, and humanity.”
“There may be raids by ICE. These are federal raids, not assisted or condoned by the Massachusetts Courts,” Lu, not speaking for the courts, told the Herald. “If you do not let the actions of ICE prevent you from cooperating with the Massachusetts courts and Massachusetts police it will make us all safer.”
The Trump administration is also looking to target worksites that hire workers living in the country unlawfully for large-scale immigration arrests, a practice that President Biden discontinued, according to reports.
Henry Barbaro, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform, told the Herald his organization supports Trump’s effort “to restore the rule of law and to put the interests of American workers first.”
“The key to stopping illegal immigration,” he said, “which displaces Americans and legal immigrants, is to end the market for illegal labor.”
Paul Diego Craney, spokesman for state watchdog Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, added: “The only disappointment I have is that Boston and Massachusetts isn’t destination number one, but I will take in the top five. It’s long overdue.”
