Gov. Maura Healey has boxed herself in over the illegal immigration crisis.
On the one hand, she insists that Massachusetts is overloaded and cannot accommodate any more illegal immigrants, so they should stop coming. It costs taxpayers a billion dollars a year to house and feed them.
On the other, she supports President Joe Biden, whose ongoing open border policies guarantee that more illegal immigrants will keep on coming and find sanctuary and generous support in Massachusetts under her administration.
And even though Healey has been wishy-washy on the question of Biden being fit to run for re-election, she will support him if he does run, which means that borders will remain open as long as Biden is around.
And more illegal immigrants will be pouring into Massachusetts to partake of a piece of the state’s generous welfare benefits.
And while Healy has been a staunch Biden loyalist, Biden has done little to bail Healey or Massachusetts out with federal funds to deal with the immigration problem that Biden created.
It is the Massachusetts taxpayer who is stuck with the bill
Yes, Healey can move homeless families of illegal Immigrants out of Terminal E at Logan Airport, where they have been sleeping, as she has done, to temporary quarters elsewhere, but they will keep on coming.
The latest group of immigrants, despite local opposition, were shipped Tuesday to the refurbished medium-security prison in Norfolk, which had been closed since 2015. Nobody will be held in solitary confinement.
Prior to that, an earlier group of 150 immigrant families sleeping at Logan was sent in February to the Melnea Cass Recreation Center in Roxbury.
The “no loitering” signs and the barriers now set up in the cleaned-up terminal will do little to keep other migrants from replacing the ones who just left, and the process will repeat itself.
The problem for Healey will be where to send the next batch, or the batch after that.
The same is true of Healey’s plan to limit the stay of homeless immigrant families in state-run overflow shelters to 30 days, or to remove families from state-run emergency hotel and motel shelters after nine months.
Once removed, are these homeless families going to be living in the street?
Or be sent back to the homes they left before illegally crossing the border? Hardly likely.
To the contrary, the Healey administration, and the taxpayer, will continue to provide them with free medical care, security, education, transportation, driver’s licenses and who knows what else.
Keep in mind that there was no immigrant crisis in Massachusetts when Trump was president. He began construction of the wall along the Mexican border and issued executive orders to secure the border and stem the flow of illegal immigration.
Biden halted construction of the wall and rescinded all of Trump’s executive orders. The border turned into the wild west and the illegal immigration invasion was on.
It was Healey in one of her many legal actions against President Trump when she was attorney general, who sued Trump over his authority to build the wall, claiming it was an “illegal power grab.”
It was only one of the one hundred suits she filed against Trump, several of which challenged Trump on the border and his initiatives to control it.
Healey is caught in a confusing tangled web on immigration and what to do about it. It is consuming her administration.
She loves and supports Joe Biden who opened the border and caused her all the problems, and hates and opposes Donald Trump who would close the border and solve her problems.
On Biden’s decision to run again, Healey said, “Whatever President Biden decides, I am doing everything in my power to defeat Donald Trump.”
Good luck with that, governor. You are going to need it, lots of it.
Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: [email protected].
