Petition by LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of MA

Since the start of the new presidency, ICE activity has surged across the United States, with close to 50,000 people in ICE detention centers in just the first few months. Here in Massachusetts, a state that has long prided itself on being a beacon of liberty and justice, the threat is especially grave.

We are witnessing a chilling rise in ICE raids in Brockton, Chelsea, East Boston, Everett, Framingham, Lawrence, Lowell, New Bedford, Waltham, Acton, Quincy, and Worcester. These communities are being terrorized and traumatized without a headline or a single statement by our Governor or state leadership. Now, more than ever, we need Governor Healey to take action to defend immigrants across the Commonwealth from the escalating state sanctioned violence.

LUCE Immigration Justice Network of Massachusetts is calling on our movement partners, allies, and supporters to join our demands to Governor Healey to end Massachusetts' participation in the prison-to-deportation pipeline by:

• Declaring ICE a rogue federal agency operating outside the law
• Support state legislation, to terminate every state contract funneling money and resources into the deportation machine, and ban new contracts (including the Dignity Not Deportations Bill - H.1588 & S.1122). This includes terminating the existing 287g contracts with the Department of Corrections, and doing everything in your power to end the Intergovernmental Service Agreement with Plymouth County Correctional Facility
• Restore COVID-19 era remote participation in our courthouses
• Create a reparations fund for families and communities shattered by these kidnappings

Governor Maura Healey: Protect our immigrant communities, NOW!

Over the past four months, friends and parents have been violently taken from their homes, jobs, school drop-offs, and bus stops. We are witnessing ICE agents taking axes to windows, dragging loved ones from cars, beating and pepper spraying them, then disappearing them into a hidden network of detention centers. These are abductions. State sanctioned kidnappings. Violations of due process, family integrity, and basic human rights. 

This isn't just lawlessness– it is a direct attack on the values that define the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

That's why we are calling on Governor Healey and state leadership to protect the people of Massachusetts—not with sympathy, but with concrete action. 

ICE is not broken, it's working exactly as designed. To target, terrorize and disappear people. President Trump and his Department of Homeland Security are spewing mistrust, creating fear, silencing those that speak out, and disappearing the rest. 

 From the displacement and attempted genocides of indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Black people, and the codification of Jim Crow-era laws to the detention of over 200,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and the surveillance of millions of Muslim, Sikh, Arab, and South Asian communities after 9/11. These tactics are not new and being repeated across the state. They echo methods used and refined over the 250 years of our nation's history.

Governor Healey: We urge you to use the full power of the state constitution. You campaigned on justice, fairness and protecting all residents of this state. The people of Massachusetts are looking to you to lead with courage. You have the legal authority, and the moral responsibility, to protect your constituents: immigrants, refugees, and ALL of us across the Commonwealth.

Join LUCE Immigration Justice Network in demanding better from Governor Healey!

These aren't out-of-reach demands, they are responsible and lawful steps grounded in our constitutional values.

States have the authority and the obligation to opt out of voluntary ICE cooperation, stop sharing data with federal agencies, bar ICE from state courthouses, and hold federal actors accountable for violations of civil rights and due process. 

None of this requires new law, just the political will from Governor Healey to enforce the laws we already have.

Governor Healey, your constituents are calling on you to:

• Uphold the Massachusetts Constitution,
• Stop the kidnappings,
• Free the disappeared,
• End the war on immigrants,
• Make Massachusetts a place of real safety, for all.