13 Comments
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: Cst Andriana Ravo of RCMP called on private number 1 hour ago
To: David Raymond Amos
Hello,
Thank you for contacting the Boston Mayor’s Office! We’re glad you reached out. To ensure you get the support you are looking for, please read on below:
If you’re looking to submit an event or meeting scheduling request with the Mayor, please reach out to the Mayor’s Scheduling team using this form.
If you need timely, non-emergency support, services, or information, please reach out to Boston 311: Dial 3-1-1 or 617-635-4500, download our City’s 311 App (iOS, Google Play), or email 311@boston.gov. For emergencies, please dial 9-1-1.
For neighborhood-specific inquiries, please reach out to your local neighborhood liaison, who can be found here.
Once again, we appreciate you reaching out!
Mayor’s Office
City of Boston
An MIT professor was fatally shot at his home and police launched a homicide investigation
BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot at his home near Boston, and authorities said Tuesday they had launched a homicide investigation.
Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was shot Monday night at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died at a local hospital on Tuesday, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
The prosecutor’s office said no suspects had been taken into custody as of Tuesday afternoon, and that its investigation was ongoing.
Loureiro, who joined MIT in 2016, was named last year to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he aimed to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of the school’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm.
Loureiro, who was married, grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon before joining MIT, it said.
“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told a campus publication.
The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, said in a statement that Loureiro’s death was a “shocking loss.”
The homicide investigation in Brookline comes as police in Providence, Rhode Island, about 50 miles away, continue to search for the gunman who killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University on Saturday. The FBI on Tuesday said it knew of no connection between the crimes.
A 22-year-old student at Boston University who lives near Loureiro’s apartment in Brookline told The Boston Globe she heard three loud noises Monday evening and feared it was gunfire. “I had never heard anything so loud, so I assumed they were gunshots,” Liv Schachner was quoted as saying. “It’s difficult to grasp. It just seems like it keeps happening.”
Some of Loureiro’s students visited his home, an apartment in a three-story brick building, Tuesday afternoon to pay their respects, the Globe reported.
The U.S. ambassador to Portugal, John J. Arrigo, expressed his condolences in an online post that honored Loureiro for his leadership and contributions to science.
“It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” Loureiro said when he was named to lead the plasma science lab last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”
From: Mayor's Office <mayor@boston.gov>
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: Cst Andriana Ravo of RCMP called on private number 1 hour ago
To: <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Hello,
Thank you for contacting the Boston Mayor’s Office! We’re glad you reached out. To ensure you get the support you are looking for, please read on below:
If you’re looking to submit an event or meeting scheduling request with the Mayor, please reach out to the Mayor’s Scheduling team using this form.
If you need timely, non-emergency support, services, or information, please reach out to Boston 311: Dial 3-1-1 or 617-635-4500, download our City’s 311 App (iOS, Google Play), or email 311@boston.gov. For emergencies, please dial 9-1-1.
For neighborhood-specific inquiries, please reach out to your local neighborhood liaison, who can be found here.
Once again, we appreciate you reaching out!
Mayor’s Office
City of Boston
From: Minister of Finance / Ministre des Finances <minister-ministre@fin.gc.ca>
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: Cst Andriana Ravo of RCMP called on private number 1 hour ago
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Please be assured that we appreciate receiving your comments.
Le ministère des Finances Canada accuse réception de votre courriel.
Nous vous assurons que vos commentaires sont les bienvenus.
From: Ministerial Correspondence Unit - Justice Canada <mcu@justice.gc.ca>
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Subject: Automatic Reply
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for writing to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
Due to the volume of correspondence addressed to the Minister, please note that there may be a delay in processing your email. Rest assured that your message will be carefully reviewed.
We do not respond to correspondence that contains offensive language.
-------------------
Merci d'avoir écrit au ministre de la Justice et procureur général du Canada.
En raison du volume de correspondance adressée au ministre, veuillez
prendre note qu'il pourrait y avoir un retard dans le traitement de
votre courriel. Nous tenons à vous assurer que votre message sera lu
avec soin.
Nous ne répondons pas à la correspondance contenant un langage offensant.
From: Moore, Rob - M.P. <Rob.Moore@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: Cst Andriana Ravo of RCMP called on private number 1 hour ago
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for contacting the Honourable Rob Moore, P.C., M.P. office. We appreciate the time you took to get in touch with our office.
If you did not already, please ensure to include your full contact details on your email and the appropriate staff will be able to action your request. We strive to ensure all constituent correspondence is responded to in a timely manner.
If your question or concern is time sensitive, please call our office: 506-832-4200.
Again, we thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Office of the Honourable Rob Moore, P.C., M.P.
Member of Parliament for Fundy Royal
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Subject: Thank you for your email
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
This is to acknowledge that your email has been received by the Office of the Premier.
We appreciate the time you have taken to write.
NOTICE: This e-mail was intended for a specific person. If it has reached you by mistake, please delete it and advise me by return e-mail. Any privilege associated with this information is not waived. Thank you for your cooperation and assistance.
Avis: Ce message est confidentiel, peut être protégé par le secret professionnel et est à l'usage exclusif de son destinataire. Il est strictement interdit à toute autre personne de le diffuser, le distribuer ou le reproduire. Si le destinataire ne peut être joint ou vous est inconnu, veuillez informer l'expéditeur par courrier électronique immédiatement et effacer ce message et en détruire toute copie. Merci de votre cooperation.
From: Premier <PREMIER@novascotia.ca>
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Subject: Thank you for your email
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for contacting the Office of the Premier. This is an automatic confirmation that your message has been received.
Please note that the Premier receives a tremendous volume of e-mails and letters every week. If your message requires an answer, we will get back to you as soon as possible.
To get you the best answer possible and ensure accurate information, your message may be shared with other Ministers or appropriate government officials to respond on the Premier’s behalf. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
Here are some helpful resources:
- To learn more about Wind West, Canada's first offshore wind development, please visit:
https://novascotia.ca/wind-
west/ - For more information on the newly expanded Nova Scotia School Lunch Program and to order an affordable, nutritious lunch for your public school student, please visit: https://nslunch.ca/
- To learn more and apply for the $750 Seniors Care Grant to help with the costs of household and health services, including home heating, please visit: https://novascotia.ca/
seniors-care-grant/. To learn more and apply for a Property Tax Rebate for Seniors of up to $800, please visit: https://beta. novascotia.ca/apply-property- tax-rebate-property-tax- rebate-seniors/. - To discover Nova Scotia Loyal and learn how to identify, buy, and support local Nova Scotian products, please visit: https://nsloyal.ca/
- To learn more and sign up for the Nova Scotia Guard to rise to the occasion in the wake of an emergency, please visit: https://nsguard.ca/
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Thank you,
The Premier’s Correspondence Team
From: Poilievre, Pierre - M.P. <pierre.poilievre@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Subject: Acknowledgement – Email Received / Accusé de réception – Courriel reçu
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
On behalf of the Hon. Pierre Poilievre, we would like to thank you for contacting the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition.
Mr. Poilievre greatly values feedback and input from Canadians. We wish to inform you that the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition reads and reviews every e-mail we receive. Please note that this account receives a high volume of e-mails, and we endeavour to reply as quickly as possible.
If you are a constituent of Mr. Poilievre in the riding of Battle River - Crowfoot and you have an urgent matter to discuss, please contact his constituency office at:
Phone: 1-780-608-4600
Fax: 1-780-608-4603
Hon. Pierre Poilievre, M.P.
Battle River – Crowfoot
4945 50 Street
Camrose, Alberta T4V 1P9
Once again, thank you for writing.
Sincerely,
Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition
_____________________________
Au nom de l’honorable Pierre Poilievre, nous tenons à vous remercier d’avoir communiqué avec le Bureau du chef de l’Opposition officielle.
M. Poilievre accorde une grande importance aux commentaires et aux suggestions des Canadiens. Nous tenons à vous informer que le Bureau du chef de l’Opposition officielle lit et examine tous les courriels qu’il reçoit. Veuillez noter que ce compte reçoit un volume important de courriels et que nous nous efforçons d’y répondre le plus rapidement possible.
Si vous êtes un électeur de M. Poilievre dans la circonscription de Battle River - Crowfoot et que vous avez une question urgente à discuter, veuillez contacter son bureau de circonscription :
Téléphone :
Télécopieur :
L’honorable Pierre Poilievre, député
Battle River – Crowfoot
4945, 50 Street
Camrose (Alberta) T4V 1P9
Encore une fois, merci de votre message.
Veuillez agréer nos salutations distinguées,
Bureau du chef de l’Opposition officielle
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: Cst Andriana Ravo of RCMP called on private number 1 hour ago
To: <mediarelations@pd.boston.gov>, <Andriana.Ravo@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, <law@boston.gov>, <clare.kelly@boston.gov>, <311@boston.gov>, dominic.leblanc <dominic.leblanc@parl.gc.ca>, Michael.Duheme <Michael.Duheme@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, Sean.Fraser <Sean.Fraser@parl.gc.ca>, mcu <mcu@justice.gc.ca>, pierre.poilievre <pierre.poilievre@parl.gc.ca>, don.davies <don.davies@parl.gc.ca>, <bzoll@miltonma.gov>, <JKing@miltonmapolice.gov>, <DBrown@miltonmapolice.gov>, <Richard.Wells@mahouse.gov>, Boston.Mail <Boston.Mail@ic.fbi.gov>, <johnbena3@gmail.com>, Mark.Blakely <Mark.Blakely@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, <ps.ministerofpublicsafety-ministredelasecuritepublique.sp@ps-sp.gc.ca>, rob.moore <rob.moore@parl.gc.ca>, robert.gauvin <robert.gauvin@gnb.ca>, robert.mckee <robert.mckee@gnb.ca>, John.Williamson <John.Williamson@parl.gc.ca>, <Don.Monahan@gnb.ca>, <melanie.joly@ised-isde.gc.ca>, Susan.Holt <Susan.Holt@gnb.ca>, premier <premier@gov.bc.ca>, PREMIER <PREMIER@gov.ns.ca>, premier <premier@ontario.ca>, premier <premier@gov.yk.ca>, Office of the Premier <scott.moe@gov.sk.ca>, premier <premier@gov.pe.ca>, premier <premier@gov.nl.ca>, premier <premier@gov.nt.ca>, premier <premier@gov.ab.ca>, <paulpalango@eastlink.ca>, <adam@adamrodgers.ca>, <premier@gov.nu.ca>
Cc: <francois-philippe.champagne@parl.gc.ca>, fin.minfinance-financemin.fin <fin.minfinance-financemin.fin@canada.ca>, pm <pm@pm.gc.ca>, pierre.poilievre <pierre.poilievre@parl.gc.ca>, don.davies <don.davies@parl.gc.ca>, Donald J. Trump <contact@win.donaldjtrump.com>, <Adam.Cederbaum@boston.gov>, <internalaffairs@pd.boston.gov>, <Mayor@boston.gov>
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I CALLED INTERNAL AFFAIRS AGAIN Internal Affairs Division
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Boston, Halifax mayors highlight strength of cities' relationship on Remembrance Day
Wu, Fillmore discussed trade and the generational friendship between Bostonians and Nova Scotians
The mayors of Boston and Halifax cited the cities' long-standing relationship and the friendship between Bostonians and Nova Scotians when they met in the province's capital on Tuesday.
Boston’s newly re-elected mayor, Michelle Wu, and Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore had discussions at city hall before they moved outside to attend Halifax’s annual Remembrance Day service at Grand Parade.
“Our relationship between Halifax and Boston is forged in history and in hard times, and it is strengthened by generation upon generation and strengthened by tradition,” Fillmore said to reporters at a media availability before the ceremony.
“We're here to celebrate that today and also reflect on the shared sacrifices of our veterans through many, many conflicts around the world.”
Wu is in the province on a four-day trip that comes amid ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada. She has been in Nova Scotia since Sunday meeting with local officials, including the Halifax Port Authority and the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub.
She said it was important to be here this year "to bring a direct thanks on behalf of the people of Boston" and to emphasize the important relationship between the two cities as an economic driver.
“As mayor of a local community, I am unfortunately having to push back and outright fight against so many of the actions of our own federal government in court and every day in the lives of our residents,” Wu said.
"And so for me, this is a chance to make clear that the people of Boston feel very differently about the people of Halifax and the relationship that we have than it might seem from our federal politics in America at this moment."
Wu will attend a ceremony Wednesday morning in Martins River, N.S., when a 13.7-metre white spruce selected as Nova Scotia’s 2025 Tree for Boston is cut down.
The province sends a huge Christmas tree to Boston each year as a present to the city for providing medical personnel and supplies to Nova Scotia in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion on Dec. 6, 1917.
Wu is the first Boston mayor to attend the Tree for Boston tree cutting.
A tree-lighting ceremony for the white spruce will take place at the Boston Common on Dec. 4.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mayor Michelle Wu to Visit Nova Scotia to Highlight Continued Partnership
As a thank you to Boston for sending medical aid and relief supplies following the 1917 Halifax explosion, Nova Scotia provides Boston with its annual Christmas tree for the Boston Common.
Mayor Michelle Wu announced today she will visit Nova Scotia, Canada from Sunday, November 9th to Wednesday, November 12th. The trip will highlight the continuing partnership between the City of Boston and Province of Nova Scotia following the tragic explosion in Halifax Harbor, Nova Scotia in 1917. As a thank you to Boston for sending medical aid and relief supplies following the 1917 explosion, in Halifax Harbor, Nova Scotia every year Nova Scotia provides Boston with its Christmas tree for the Boston Common. Mayor Wu will be the first Boston Mayor to attend and participate in the Tree for Boston tree cutting ceremony in Nova Scotia. During the visit, Mayor Wu will visit the Port Innovation, Engagement and Research (PIER) with leadership from the Halifax Port Authority, tour the Health Innovation Hub, and meet with the Mayor of Halifax to explore enhanced collaboration.
“For well over a century, Boston and Nova Scotia have shared a special bond of neighborly care and friendship,” said Mayor Michelle Wu. “I’m honored this year to visit our neighbors to the north for the first time and deliver a personal thank you on behalf of the people of Boston for continuing this partnership and connection that transcends boundaries and generations.”
In Nova Scotia, Mayor Wu will meet with Canadian officials and leaders to foster opportunities for economic collaboration with Boston. On Monday, Mayor Wu will meet with the Halifax Port Authority while touring the PIER, Canada’s first living lab dedicated to transportation, supply chain and logistics industries. She will also tour the Health Innovation Hub, a center for healthcare research and innovation.
Mayor Wu will also meet and exchange gifts with Halifax Mayor Andy Filmore to underscore the importance of the continued diplomatic relationship with the City of Halifax.
On Wednesday, Mayor Wu will participate in the Tree for Boston tree cutting ceremony. More information about the tradition can be found here. Mayor Wu will return to Boston on Wednesday, November 12.
On Tuesday, November 18th at 11:00 a.m., Boston’s official 2025 tree will arrive at Boston Common by flatbed truck. This year’s historic Tree for Boston is a 45-foot-tall white spruce from Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. The public is welcome to cheer the tree’s arrival with candy canes and an appearance by Santa.
Paul Gosar Gets Told TF OFF
Deputy Warden Abdella Assaff
District 5
Western
Shore - Martin's River area and includes Gold River, Beech Hill, Western
Shore, Martin's Point, and part of Martin's River, including East Side
Martin's River.
Susan Corkum-Greek
Lunenburg
Constituency Office
97 Kaulbach Street, Suite 201 Lunenburg, NS B0J 2C
Telephone
Former journalist and long-time community development advocate, the Honourable Susan Corkum-Greek was first elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly as MLA for Lunenburg in 2021 and was re-elected in 2024.
She is the ministerial assistant to the Minister of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage, focusing on tourism.
She has been Minister of Economic Development.
A graduate of the University of King’s College, Halifax, Corkum-Greek spent nearly two decades in community journalism. She credits those years for igniting her passion for community economic development, which she has pursued full time since 2002.
Commonly Used Numbers
Reception: (902) 543-8181
Building: (902) 541-1325
Planning: (902) 530-2802
Recreation: (902) 541-1343
Fax: (902) 543-7123
Email: info@modl.ca
10 Allée Champlain Drive
Cookville, Nova Scotia B4V 9E4
Office Hours
Monday to Friday: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Closed all statutory holidays.
- Mayor and Councillors
- Administration
- Building/Planning/Fire Inspection
- Economic Development
- Engineering & Public Works
- Finance
- Recreation
All Departments
Administration
Tom MacEwan, LLB
Chief Administrative Officer
Phone: (902) 541-1320
Cell: (902) 521-7482
Fax: (902) 543-7123
tom.macewan@modl.ca
Jonathan G. Cuming
Code of Conduct Complaints, Taylor MacLellan Cochrane law firm
Phone: (902) 678-6156
April Whynot-Lohnes
Municipal Clerk
Phone: (902) 541-1323
Fax: (902) 543-7123
april.whynot-lohnes@modl.ca
Recreation, Parks & Tourism
General Enquiries
Phone: (902) 541-1343
Fax: (902) 543-7123
recreation@modl.ca
Mayor and Councillors
Elspeth McLean-Wile
Mayor
Phone: (902) 541-1326
elspeth.mclean-wile@modl.ca
From: Minister of Finance / Ministre des Finances <minister-ministre@fin.gc.ca>
Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
From: Blois, Kody - M.P. <Kody.Blois@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for emailing my office, I appreciate you reaching out to me.
Due to the high volume of emails that our office receives daily, there may be a delay in our response. Please note that we give priority to correspondence received from the constituents of Kings-Hants, and as such, we ask that you include your residential address and telephone number in your communication, to better assist you.
My constituency office is monitoring in person visits, so a phone call or email notice to set up an appointment prior to would be greatly appreciated.
Our office hours are:
Monday to Thursday 9:00 am - 4:00 pm (closed for lunch from 12:30 - 1:30 pm)
Friday 9:00 am - 12:30 pm
Consitutency Office (902) 542-4010
Parliament Hill Office (613) 995-8231
The Government of Canada has no jurisdiction over road maintenance, the Nova Scotia Health Authority, Community Services or forestry. For those concerns within provincial jurisdiction you will need to contact your Nova Scotia MLA.
Find yours at: https//enstools.
Kody Blois
Member of Parliament
Kings–Hants
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Nov 29, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Subject: Fwd: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: <fred@wulaw.ca>, ragingdissident <ragingdissident@protonmail.com>, <DerekRants9595@gmail.com>, <Darren.Fisher@parl.gc.ca>, <fw@mlflitigation.com>, <mayor@halifax.ca>, Premier <PREMIER@novascotia.ca>, pm <pm@pm.gc.ca>, <ps.ministerofpublicsafety-ministredelasecuritepublique.sp@ps-sp.gc.ca>, Michael.Duheme <Michael.Duheme@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, Mark.Blakely <Mark.Blakely@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, Robert <rpineo@pattersonlaw.ca>, mcu <mcu@justice.gc.ca>, Sean.Fraser <Sean.Fraser@parl.gc.ca>, elizabeth.may <elizabeth.may@parl.gc.ca>, don.davies <don.davies@parl.gc.ca>, robert.gauvin <robert.gauvin@gnb.ca>, rob.moore <rob.moore@parl.gc.ca>, pierre.poilievre <pierre.poilievre@parl.gc.ca>, <jasonlavigne@outlook.com>, <melanie.joly@ised-isde.gc.ca>, <david.mcguinty@parl.gc.ca>, <michael.chong@parl.gc.ca>, Mitton, Megan (LEG) <megan.mitton@gnb.ca>, michelle.rempel <michelle.rempel@parl.gc.ca>, <mike.dawson@parl.gc.ca>, John.Williamson <John.Williamson@parl.gc.ca>, <patty.hajdu@parl.gc.ca>, <JOHN.HERRON@gnb.ca>, Susan.Holt <Susan.Holt@gnb.ca>, len.hoyt <len.hoyt@mcinnescooper.com>, <peter.mackay@mcinnescooper.com>, Yves-Francois.Blanchet <Yves-Francois.Blanchet@parl.gc.ca>, Frank.McKenna <Frank.McKenna@td.com>, justmin <justmin@gov.ns.ca>, <clerks@halifax.ca>, <haley.ryan@cbc.ca>, <paulpalango@eastlink.ca>, <david.hendsbee@halifax.ca>, <patty.cuttell@halifax.ca>, <janet.steele@halifax.ca>, <john.young@halifax.ca>, <tpillay@gov.nu.ca>, <dpink@nsbs.org>, <jillian.banfield@dal.ca>, <tony.mancini@halifax.ca>
Cc: <Don.Monahan@gnb.ca>, <John.Dornan@gnb.ca>, dominic.leblanc <dominic.leblanc@parl.gc.ca>, Jacques.Poitras <Jacques.Poitras@cbc.ca>, washington field <washington.field@ic.fbi.gov>, Wayne.Long <Wayne.Long@parl.gc.ca>, premier <premier@gov.ab.ca>, premier <premier@gov.nl.ca>, premier <premier@gov.nt.ca>, Office of the Premier <scott.moe@gov.sk.ca>, premier <premier@gov.pe.ca>, premier <premier@gov.yk.ca>, premier <premier@ontario.ca>
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Subject: Fwd: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: <clerks@halifax.ca>, <haley.ryan@cbc.ca>, <paulpalango@eastlink.ca>, ragingdissident <ragingdissident@protonmail.
Cc: <mayor@halifax.ca>, Premier <PREMIER@novascotia.ca>, pm <pm@pm.gc.ca>, <ps.ministerofpublicsafety-
Cst Alcoum 902 490 5020
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Subject: Fwd: Réponse automatique : The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: <jennifer.sweet@cbc.ca>, pm <pm@pm.gc.ca>, awaugh@postmedia.com <AWaugh@postmedia.com>, <Sam.Johnston@gnb.ca>, news957 <news957@rogers.com>, Nathalie.G.Drouin <Nathalie.G.Drouin@pco-bcp.gc.ca>, news <news@chco.tv>, rfife <rfife@globeandmail.com>, <News@nowmediainc.com>, news-tips <news-tips@nytimes.com>
Cc: davidmylesforfredericton@gmail.com <DavidMylesForFredericton@gmail.com>, djtjr <djtjr@trumporg.com>, Mark.Blakely <Mark.Blakely@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>
From: Blanchet, Yves-François - Député <Yves-Francois.Blanchet@parl.
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Subject: Réponse automatique : The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
(Ceci est une réponse automatique)
(English follows)
Bonjour,
Nous avons bien reçu votre courriel et nous vous remercions d'avoir écrit à M. Yves-François Blanchet, député de Beloeil-Chambly et chef du Bloc Québécois.
Comme nous avons un volume important de courriels, il nous est impossible de répondre à tous individuellement. Soyez assuré(e) que votre courriel recevra toute l'attention nécessaire.
Nous ne répondons pas à la correspondance contenant un langage offensant
L'équipe du député Yves-François Blanchet
Chef du Bloc Québécois
Thank you for your email. We will read it as soon as we can.
We do not respond to correspondence that contains offensive language.
From: Fraser, Sean - M.P. <Sean.Fraser@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for your contacting the constituency office of Sean Fraser, Member of Parliament for Central Nova.
This is an automated reply.
Please note that all correspondence is read, however due to the high volume of emails we receive on a daily basis there may be a delay in getting back to you. Priority will be given to residents of Central Nova.
To ensure we get back to you in a timely manner, please include your full name, home address including postal code and phone number when reaching out.
Thank you.
-------------
Merci d'avoir contacté le bureau de circonscription de Sean Fraser, député de Central Nova. Il s'agit d'une réponse automatisée.
Veuillez noter que toute la correspondance est lue, mais qu'en raison du volume élevé de courriels que nous recevons quotidiennement, il se peut que nous ne puissions pas vous répondre dans les meilleurs délais.
Pour que nous puissions vous répondre dans les meilleurs délais, veuillez indiquer votre nom complet, votre adresse personnelle, y compris le code postal, et votre numéro de téléphone lorsque vous nous contactez.
Nous vous remercions.
Facebook : facebook.com/SeanFraserMP
Twitter : @SeanFraserMP
Instagram : SeanFraserMP
Sans frais : 1-844-641-5886
From: Ministerial Correspondence Unit - Justice Canada <mcu@justice.gc.ca>
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Subject: Automatic Reply
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for writing to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
Due to the volume of correspondence addressed to the Minister, please note that there may be a delay in processing your email. Rest assured that your message will be carefully reviewed.
We do not respond to correspondence that contains offensive language.
-------------------
Merci d'avoir écrit au ministre de la Justice et procureur général du Canada.
En raison du volume de correspondance adressée au ministre, veuillez
prendre note qu'il pourrait y avoir un retard dans le traitement de
votre courriel. Nous tenons à vous assurer que votre message sera lu
avec soin.
Nous ne répondons pas à la correspondance contenant un langage offensant.
From: Rempel, Michelle - M.P. <Michelle.Rempel@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
On behalf of the Honourable Michelle Rempel Garner, P.C., M.P. thank you for your email. Our office appreciates the time you took to get in touch with the MP. Due to the high volume of email correspondence our office receives, below is a guide on how your email will be responded to:
If you are a constituent of Calgary Nose Hill:
Queries regarding government programs, policies and operations take time to research, contact appropriate departments and collate information for dissemination to you. If you have provided your full contact details on your query, your email will be responded to as necessary.
If your query is case related (i.e. immigration, CPP, EI, tax issues, etc.), consent forms will need to be filled out before your file can be activated. If you have not yet filled out our office’s consent form, a staff member will be in contact with you.
If you are not a constituent of Calgary Nose Hill:
If you are not a Calgary Nose Hill resident, given the high volume of
emails we receive, your email will be reviewed and filed as INFORMATION.
If the email is Critic portfolio in nature, it will be responded to as
necessary.
If you are contacting MP Rempel Garner to review your case work, please first contact your local MP for assistance.
If your email is a form letter:
Thank you for submitting this form letter. Due to the high volume of emails M.P. Rempel Garner’s office receives, we are unable to individually reply to form letters, particularly from non constituents. Form letters are template letters generated by organizations, webforms and other sources on a given issue. However, M.P. Rempel Garner does review and consider information received from all form letters.
If you are a constituent and would like a response regarding the specific issue raised in your form letter, please email M.P. Rempel Garner’s office individually at this email address with “Constituent - (Insert subject)” in the subject of your email. This helps us to identify constituents who wish to receive a response among the hundreds of form letter responses our office receives on any given day.
Again, thank you for reaching out to our office.
Invites:
If you have invited MP Rempel Garner to your event, please note that decisions on what events to attend are completed on a bi-monthly basis. As our office receives hundreds of invitations each week, our office will only contact you if MP Rempel Garner will be attending.
Updates on MP Rempel Garner’s Work:
If you wish to know what is happening in Calgary Nose Hill and the job MP Rempel Garner is doing for you in Ottawa, please sign up for her e-newsletter on her website: https://mprempel.ca/
*M.P. Rempel Garner's office has a zero tolerance policy for threatening, abusive, or aggressive language or behaviour towards the Member and their staff. Phone calls, voicemails and emails containing threatening or abusive language will result in the termination of communications.
Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Office of The Honourable Michelle Rempel Garner, P.C., M.P.
Calgary Nose Hill
From: Moore, Rob - M.P. <Rob.Moore@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for contacting the Honourable Rob Moore, P.C., M.P. office. We appreciate the time you took to get in touch with our office.
If you did not already, please ensure to include your full contact details on your email and the appropriate staff will be able to action your request. We strive to ensure all constituent correspondence is responded to in a timely manner.
If your question or concern is time sensitive, please call our office: 506-832-4200.
Again, we thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Office of the Honourable Rob Moore, P.C., M.P.
Member of Parliament for Fundy Royal
From: Poilievre, Pierre - M.P. <pierre.poilievre@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Subject: Acknowledgement – Email Received / Accusé de réception – Courriel reçu
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
On behalf of the Hon. Pierre Poilievre, we would like to thank you for contacting the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition.
Mr. Poilievre greatly values feedback and input from Canadians. We wish to inform you that the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition reads and reviews every e-mail we receive. Please note that this account receives a high volume of e-mails, and we endeavour to reply as quickly as possible.
If you are a constituent of Mr. Poilievre in the riding of Battle River - Crowfoot and you have an urgent matter to discuss, please contact his constituency office at:
Phone: 1-780-608-4600
Fax: 1-780-608-4603
Hon. Pierre Poilievre, M.P.
Battle River – Crowfoot
4945 50 Street
Camrose, Alberta T4V 1P9
Once again, thank you for writing.
Sincerely,
Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition
______________________________
Au nom de l’honorable Pierre Poilievre, nous tenons à vous remercier d’avoir communiqué avec le Bureau du chef de l’Opposition officielle.
M. Poilievre accorde une grande importance aux commentaires et aux suggestions des Canadiens. Nous tenons à vous informer que le Bureau du chef de l’Opposition officielle lit et examine tous les courriels qu’il reçoit. Veuillez noter que ce compte reçoit un volume important de courriels et que nous nous efforçons d’y répondre le plus rapidement possible.
Si vous êtes un électeur de M. Poilievre dans la circonscription de Battle River - Crowfoot et que vous avez une question urgente à discuter, veuillez contacter son bureau de circonscription :
Téléphone :
Télécopieur :
L’honorable Pierre Poilievre, député
Battle River – Crowfoot
4945, 50 Street
Camrose (Alberta) T4V 1P9
Encore une fois, merci de votre message.
Veuillez agréer nos salutations distinguées,
Bureau du chef de l’Opposition officielle
From: Premier <PREMIER@novascotia.ca>
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Subject: Thank you for your email
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for contacting the Office of the Premier. This is an automatic confirmation that your message has been received.
Please note that the Premier receives a tremendous volume of e-mails and letters every week. If your message requires an answer, we will get back to you as soon as possible.
To get you the best answer possible and ensure accurate information, your message may be shared with other Ministers or appropriate government officials to respond on the Premier’s behalf. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
Here are some helpful resources:
- To learn more about Wind West, Canada's first offshore wind development, please visit:
https://novascotia.ca/wind-
west/ - For more information on the newly expanded Nova Scotia School Lunch Program and to order an affordable, nutritious lunch for your public school student, please visit: https://nslunch.ca/
- To learn more and apply for the $750 Seniors Care Grant to help with the costs of household and health services, including home heating, please visit: https://novascotia.ca/
seniors-care-grant/. To learn more and apply for a Property Tax Rebate for Seniors of up to $800, please visit: https://beta. novascotia.ca/apply-property- tax-rebate-property-tax- rebate-seniors/. - To discover Nova Scotia Loyal and learn how to identify, buy, and support local Nova Scotian products, please visit: https://nsloyal.ca/
- To learn more and sign up for the Nova Scotia Guard to rise to the occasion in the wake of an emergency, please visit: https://nsguard.ca/
- To
book health services, get secure access to your own health records, or
find the right care option for you, please download the YourHealthNS app or visit: https://yourhealthns.
ca/
Stay informed with NSGov News. Sign up for a
monthly newsletter with information about community programs, services,
and news that matters to you, delivered straight to your inbox.
Subscribe at:
https://newsletter.novascotia.
For the most up-to-date information from the Government of Nova Scotia, please visit: https://novascotia.ca/.
Thank you,
The Premier’s Correspondence Team
From: Office, Clerks <clerks@halifax.ca>
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: [External Email] Fwd: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Information regarding submitting correspondence for the public record can be found on Halifax.ca:
https://www.halifax.ca/city-
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Subject: Fwd: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: <clerks@halifax.ca>, <haley.ryan@cbc.ca>, <paulpalango@eastlink.ca>, ragingdissident <ragingdissident@protonmail.com>, <david.hendsbee@halifax.ca>, <patty.cuttell@halifax.ca>, <janet.steele@halifax.ca>, <john.young@halifax.ca>, <tpillay@gov.nu.ca>, <tpillay@nsbs.org>, <dpink@nsbs.org>, <jillian.banfield@dal.ca>, <tony.mancini@halifax.ca>
Cc: <mayor@halifax.ca>, Premier <PREMIER@novascotia.ca>, pm <pm@pm.gc.ca>, <ps.ministerofpublicsafety-ministredelasecuritepublique.sp@ps-sp.gc.ca>, Michael.Duheme <Michael.Duheme@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, Mark.Blakely <Mark.Blakely@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, Pineo, Robert <rpineo@pattersonlaw.ca>, mcu <mcu@justice.gc.ca>, Sean.Fraser <Sean.Fraser@parl.gc.ca>, elizabeth.may <elizabeth.may@parl.gc.ca>, don.davies <don.davies@parl.gc.ca>, robert.gauvin <robert.gauvin@gnb.ca>, rob.moore <rob.moore@parl.gc.ca>, pierre.poilievre <pierre.poilievre@parl.gc.ca>, <jasonlavigne@outlook.com>, <melanie.joly@ised-isde.gc.ca>, <david.mcguinty@parl.gc.ca>, <michael.chong@parl.gc.ca>, Mitton, Megan (LEG) <megan.mitton@gnb.ca>, michelle.rempel <michelle.rempel@parl.gc.ca>, <mike.dawson@parl.gc.ca>, John.Williamson <John.Williamson@parl.gc.ca>, <patty.hajdu@parl.gc.ca>, <JOHN.HERRON@gnb.ca>, Susan.Holt <Susan.Holt@gnb.ca>, len.hoyt <len.hoyt@mcinnescooper.com>, <peter.mackay@mcinnescooper.com>, Yves-Francois.Blanchet <Yves-Francois.Blanchet@parl.gc.ca>, Frank.McKenna <Frank.McKenna@td.com>
Cst Alcoum 902 490 5020
From: Fillmore, Andy - M.P. <Andy.Fillmore@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 12:56 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: RE Trudeau Invoking the Emergency Act
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Hello, thank you for your email, this is an automated response confirming receipt.
Due to the high volume of correspondence we will prioritize responding to constituents in our riding of Halifax. Please reply to your original email with your postal code and we will reply as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Office of Andy Fillmore
Member of Parliament for Halifax
https://davidraymondamos3.blogspot.com/2025/09/halifax-mayor-under-investigation-for.html
Wednesday, 3 September 2025
Halifax mayor under investigation for allegedly breaching municipal code of conduct
From: Office, Clerks <clerks@halifax.ca>
Date: Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: [External Email] Fwd: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
This is to confirm that your email has been received by the Office of the Municipal Clerk for the Halifax Regional Municipality. You can also reach us by phone, Mon-Fri 8:30am-4:30pm, at 902.490.4210.
Information regarding submitting correspondence for the public record can be found on Halifax.ca:
https://www.halifax.ca/city-
Date: Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Subject: Thank you for your email
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Thank you for contacting the Office of the Premier. This is an automatic confirmation that your message has been received.
Please note that the Premier receives a tremendous volume of e-mails and letters every week. If your message requires an answer, we will get back to you as soon as possible.
To get you the best answer possible and ensure accurate information, your message may be shared with other Ministers or appropriate government officials to respond on the Premier’s behalf. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
Here are some helpful resources:
- For more information on Nova Scotia’s response to
U.S. economic tariffs and to share your questions and ideas, please visit https://novascotia.ca/
tariffs/ or call our toll-free tariff hotline at 1-800-670-4357. - To discover Nova Scotia Loyal and learn how to identify, buy, and support local Nova Scotian products, please visit: https://nsloyal.ca/
- To book health services, get secure access to your own health records, or find the right care option for you, please download the YourHealthNS app or visit: https://yourhealthns.ca/
- For more information about the new Nova Scotia School Lunch Program and to order an affordable, nutritious lunch for your public school student, please visit: https://nslunch.ca/
- To learn more and sign up for the Nova Scotia Guard to rise to the occasion in the wake of an emergency, please visit: https://nsguard.ca/
For the most up-to-date information from the Government of Nova Scotia, please visit: https://novascotia.ca/.
Thank you,
The Premier’s Correspondence Team
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Subject: Fwd: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: Premier <PREMIER@novascotia.ca>, <clerks@halifax.ca>, <mayor@halifax.ca>, <tony.mancini@halifax.ca>
Cc: <david.hendsbee@halifax.ca>, <patty.cuttell@halifax.ca>, <janet.steele@halifax.ca>, <john.young@halifax.ca>, <TPillay@gov.nu.ca>, <tpillay@nsbs.org>, <dpink@nsbs.org>, <haley.ryan@cbc.ca>, <jillian.banfield@dal.ca>
Halifax mayor under investigation for allegedly breaching municipal code of conduct
At least 2 people complained Fillmore’s comments about CAO role were misleading
The mayor of Halifax is being investigated for possibly breaking the city's code of conduct, after an independent consultant decided complaints he had misled the public about governance at city hall had merit.
Office of the Municipal Clerk
We continue to serve the public remotely. All inquiries, correspondence, legal documents and appeals can be faxed or emailed.
Legal documents can also be served in person Monday – Friday 8:30am – 4:30pm.
If you need assistance in-person, we encourage you to contact our office for an appointment.
Email: clerks@halifax.caFax: 902.490.4208
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Subject: The Crown has a conduct code??? Yea Right Tell me another one
To: robert.mckee <robert.mckee@gnb.ca>, Mike.Comeau <Mike.Comeau@gnb.ca>, Mitton, Megan (LEG) <megan.mitton@gnb.ca>, Robert. Jones <Robert.Jones@cbc.ca>, jan.jensen <jan.jensen@justice.gc.ca>, <jasonlavigne@outlook.com>, <ps.ministerofpublicsafety-
Cc: <amacgregor@strait-shores.com>
From: King, Rollie <rollie.king@mcadvisory.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: [EXTERNAL] Fwd: Loella’s Country Market got lots of attention in CBC last week EH Mr Outhouse?
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Thank you for your email. I am currently out of country, returning April 23rd. I will be monitoring my email while I am away however it may take a one or two days to respond. Thank you for your patience.
If your email is of an urgent nature please contact Lily Meunier-Cote at:
lily.meuniercote@mcadvisory.
Lily will know how to reach me quickly if needed.
Rollie King
From: "Singh - QP, Jagmeet" JSingh-QP@ndp.on.ca
Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 16:39:35 +0000
Subject: Automatic reply: Re Federal Court File # T-1557-15 and the
upcoming hearing on May 24th I called a lot of your people before High
Noon today Correct Ralph Goodale and Deputy Minister Malcolm Brown?
To: David Amos motomaniac333@gmail.com
For immediate assistance please contact our Brampton office at
905-799-3939 or jsingh-co@ndp.on.ca
---------- Original message ----------
From: David Amos motomaniac333@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 12:37:08 -0400
Subject: Re Federal Court File # T-1557-15 and the upcoming hearing on
May 24th I called a lot of your people before High Noon today Correct
Ralph Goodale and Deputy Minister Malcolm Brown?
To: hon.ralph.goodale@canada.ca, rona.ambrose@parl.gc.ca,
communications@ps.gc.ca, Malcolm.Brown@ps-sp.gc.ca,
Heather.DeSantis@ps-sp.gc.ca,
ps.publicsafetymcu-
stephen.greene@sen.parl.gc.ca, pm@pm.gc.ca, maxime.bernier@parl.gc.ca,
Michael.Duheme@rcmp-grc.gc.ca, michael.chong@parl.gc.ca
Cc: David Amos david.raymond.amos@gmail.com,
marc.giroux@fja-cmf.gc.ca, andrew.baumberg@fct-cf.gc.ca,
mcu@justice.gc.ca, jan.jensen@justice.gc.ca, intcomm@mk.gov.hu,
washington.field@ic.fbi.gov, econdept@ceu.edu,
j.Russell.George@tigta.treas.
George.Soros@
Norman.Sabourin@cjc-ccm.gc.ca, john.kulik@mcinnescooper.com,
btgnaff@gmail.com, jsingh-qp@ndp.on.ca, Heather.DeSantis@canada.ca,
Malcolm.Brown@canada.ca
Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Deputy Minister Malcolm Brown
269 Laurier Avenue West,
19th Floor, Room 1919
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0P8
Telephone: 613-991-2895
Interesting news about the NDP N'esy Pas?
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/
Jagmeet Singh Would Shatter Historic Barrier By Capturing NDP Leadership
CP | By Kristy Kirkup, The Canadian Press
Posted: 05/15/2017 10:23 am EDT
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/
NDP leadership hopeful Brian Graff takes party to court after they
block his candidacy
Maura Forrest Tuesday, May 16, 2017
---------- Original message ----------
From: "Kulik, John" john.kulik@mcinnescooper.com
Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 18:29:07 +0000
Subject: McInnes Cooper
To: motomaniac333@gmail.com, david.raymond.amos@gmail.com
Dear Mr. Amos:
I have tried to call you back a number of times at 902-800-0369 but
each time I get a busy signal.
John Kulik
[McInnes Cooper]<http://www.
John Kulik Q.C.
Partner & General Counsel
McInnes Cooper
tel +1 (902) 444 8571 | fax +1 (902) 425 6350
1969 Upper Water Street
Suite 1300
Purdy's Wharf Tower II Halifax, NS, B3J 2V1
asst Cathy Ohlhausen | +1 (902) 455 8215
---------- Original message ----------
From: "Kulik, John" john.kulik@mcinnescooper.com
Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 17:37:49 +0000
Subject: McInnes Cooper
To: motomaniac333@gmail.com, david.raymond.amos@gmail.com
Dear Mr. Amos:
I am General Counsel for McInnes Cooper. If you need to communicate
with our firm, please do so through me.
Thank you.
John Kulik
[McInnes Cooper] http://www.mcinnescooper.com/
John Kulik Q.C.
Partner & General Counsel
McInnes Cooper
tel +1 (902) 444 8571 | fax +1 (902) 425 6350
1969 Upper Water Street
Suite 1300
Purdy's Wharf Tower II Halifax, NS, B3J 2V1
asst Cathy Ohlhausen | +1 (902) 455 8215
Notice This communication, including any attachments, is confidential
and may be protected by solicitor/client privilege. It is intended
only for the person or persons to whom it is addressed. If you have
received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by e-mail or
telephone at McInnes Cooper's expense.
Avis Les informations contenues dans ce courriel, y compris toute(s)
pièce(s) jointe(s), sont confidentielles et peuvent faire l'objet d'un
privilège avocat-client. Les informations sont dirigées au(x)
destinataire(s) seulement. Si vous avez reçu ce courriel par erreur,
veuillez en aviser l'expéditeur par courriel ou par téléphone, aux
frais de McInnes Cooper.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Public Safety MCU / Sécurité publique UCM (PS/SP)"
ps.publicsafetymcu-
Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 15:57:24 +0000
Subject: Automatic reply: Re the CBA, the RCMP, Federal Court File #
T-1557-15 and the Hearing before the Federal Court of Appeal on May
24th 2017
To: David Amos motomaniac333@gmail.com
Merci d’avoir écrit à l’honorable Ralph Goodale, ministre de la
Sécurité publique et de la Protection civile.
En raison d’une augmentation importante du volume de la correspondance
adressée au ministre, veuillez prendre note qu’il pourrait y avoir un
retard dans le traitement de votre courriel. Soyez assuré que votre
message sera examiné avec soin.
*********
Thank you for writing to the Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of
Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
Due to the significant increase in the volume of correspondence
addressed to the Minister, please note that there may be a delay
processing your email. Rest assured that your message will be
carefully reviewed.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ministerial Correspondence Unit - Justice Canada mcu@justice.gc.ca
Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 15:56:02 +0000
Subject: Automatic reply: Re the CBA, the RCMP, Federal Court File #
T-1557-15 and the Hearing before the Federal Court of Appeal on May
24th 2017
To: David Amos motomaniac333@gmail.com
Thank you for writing to the Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould, Minister
of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
Due to the significant increase in the volume of correspondence
addressed to the Minister, please note that there may be a delay in
processing your email. Rest assured that your message will be
carefully reviewed.
-------------------
Merci d'avoir écrit à l'honorable Jody Wilson-Raybould, ministre de la
justice et procureur général du Canada.
En raison d'une augmentation importante du volume de la correspondance
adressée à la ministre, veuillez prendre note qu'il pourrait y avoir
un retard dans le traitement de votre courriel. Nous tenons à vous
assurer que votre message sera lu avec soin.
---------- Original message ----------
From: David Amos motomaniac333@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 11:55:57 -0400
Subject: Re the CBA, the RCMP, Federal Court File # T-1557-15 and the
Hearing before the Federal Court of Appeal on May 24th 2017
To: ray.adlington@mcinnescooper.
bob.paulson@rcmp-grc.gc.ca, hon.ralph.goodale@canada.ca,
Jody.Wilson-Raybould@parl.gc.
jan.jensen@justice.gc.ca
Cc: David Amos david.raymond.amos@gmail.com, Mordaith@gmail.com,
leanne.murray@mcinnescooper.
Jacques.Poitras@cbc.ca, nick.moore@bellmedia.ca,
jeremy.keefe@globalnews.ca, steve.murphy@ctv.ca,
Gilles.Blinn@rcmp-grc.gc.ca, Gilles.Moreau@forces.gc.ca,
sallybrooks25@yahoo.ca, oldmaison@yahoo.com, andre@jafaust.com,
jbosnitch@gmail.com, serge.rousselle@gnb.ca, premier@gnb.ca,
brian.gallant@gnb.ca, Larry.Tremblay@rcmp-grc.gc.ca,
luc.labonte@gnb.ca
As I told the RCMP who called me last month the proper time and place
to discuss the CBA and your former partner Judge Richard Bell is the
Federal Court of Canada
Raymond G. Adlington Partner
McInnes Cooper
1300-1969 Upper Water St., Purdy's Wharf Tower II PO Box 730, Stn. Central
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 2V1
Phone: (902) 444-8470
Fax: (902) 425-6350
E: ray.adlington@mcinnescooper.
http://www.mcinnescooper.com/
Ray Adlington named to CBA Board of Directors
May 2, 2017
Halifax partner Ray Adlington was recently named to the CBA Board of Directors.
In their announcement yesterday the CBA advised that the board would
come into effect September 1st, 2017.
After collecting extensive input over the past two years, we know
that CBA members believe it’s important for the organization to have a
Board of Directors that reflects the diversity of the legal
profession, including a mix of practice types, experience, skills,
geography and more.
Our new Board of Directors exemplifies this principle.
The board is composed from one member from each province as well as
the CBA President.
Congratulations Ray on this well deserved appointment.
Date: 20151223
Docket: T-1557-15
Fredericton, New Brunswick, December 23, 2015
PRESENT: The Honourable Mr. Justice Bell
BETWEEN:
DAVID RAYMOND AMOS
Plaintiff
and
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN
Defendant
ORDER
(Delivered orally from the Bench in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on
December 14, 2015)
The Plaintiff seeks an appeal de novo, by way of motion pursuant to
the Federal Courts Rules (SOR/98-106), from an Order made on November
12, 2015, in which Prothonotary Morneau struck the Statement of Claim
in its entirety.
At the outset of the hearing, the Plaintiff brought to my attention a
letter dated September 10, 2004, which he sent to me, in my then
capacity as Past President of the New Brunswick Branch of the Canadian
Bar Association, and the then President of the Branch, Kathleen Quigg,
(now a Justice of the New Brunswick Court of Appeal). In that letter
he stated:
As for your past President, Mr. Bell, may I suggest that you check the
work of Frank McKenna before I sue your entire law firm including you.
You are your brother’s keeper.
Frank McKenna is the former Premier of New Brunswick and a former
colleague of mine at the law firm of McInnes Cooper. In addition to
expressing an intention to sue me, the Plaintiff refers to a number of
people in his Motion Record who he appears to contend may be witnesses
or potential parties to be added. Those individuals who are known to
me personally, include, but are not limited to the former Prime
Minister of Canada, The Right Honourable Stephen Harper; former
Attorney General of Canada and now a Justice of the Manitoba Court of
Queen’s Bench, Vic Toews; former member of Parliament Rob Moore;
former Director of Policing Services, the late Grant Garneau; former
Chief of the Fredericton Police Force, Barry McKnight; former Staff
Sergeant Danny Copp; my former colleagues on the New Brunswick Court
of Appeal, Justices Bradley V. Green and Kathleen Quigg, and, retired
Assistant Commissioner Wayne Lang of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police.
In the circumstances, given the threat in 2004 to sue me in my
personal capacity and my past and present relationship with many
potential witnesses and/or potential parties to the litigation, I am
of the view there would be a reasonable apprehension of bias should I
hear this motion. See Justice de Grandpré’s dissenting judgment in
Committee for Justice and Liberty et al v National Energy Board et al,
[1978] 1 SCR 369 at p 394 for the applicable test regarding
allegations of bias. In the circumstances, although neither party has
requested I recuse myself, I consider it appropriate that I do so.
AS A RESULT OF MY RECUSAL, THIS COURT ORDERS that the Administrator of
the Court schedule another date for the hearing of the motion. There
is no order as to costs.
“B. Richard Bell”
Judge
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Amos motomaniac333@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2017 19:12:04 -0400
Subject: Attn Bob Paulson and Jan Jensen et al Re A call from Cst
Woodman (506 851 7878) today As I said to him I look forward to
meeting you RCMP dudes in Federal Court
To: bob.paulson@rcmp-grc.gc.ca, cathyc@ccca-cba.org,
Larry.Tremblay@rcmp-grc.gc.ca, dwayne.woodman@rcmp-grc.gc.ca,
jan.jensen@justice.gc.ca
Cc: david.raymond.amos@gmail.com, Jody.Wilson-Raybould@parl.gc.
hon.ralph.goodale@canada.ca
Councillor's way of proposing change violated conduct code, investigator says
Strait Shores council asked for investigation after feeling disrespected by newest member
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Journalist
Sam Farley is a Fredericton-based reporter at CBC New Brunswick. Originally from Boston, he is a journalism graduate of the University of King's College in Halifax. He can be reached at sam.farley@cbc.ca
Michelle Wu
吳弭 | |||
.jpg) Wu in 2024 | |||
| Mayor of Boston | |||
| Assumed office November 16, 2021 | |||
| Preceded by | Kim Janey (acting) | ||
| President of the Boston City Council | |||
| In office January 4, 2016 – January 1, 2018 | |||
| Preceded by | Bill Linehan | ||
| Succeeded by | Andrea Campbell | ||
| Member of the Boston City Council from the at-large district | |||
| In office January 4, 2014 – November 16, 2021 | |||
| Preceded by | Felix G. Arroyo John R. Connolly | ||
| Succeeded by | Erin Murphy | ||
| Personal details | |||
| Born | January 14, 1985 | ||
| Party | Democratic | ||
| Spouse |
Conor Pewarski (m. 2012) | ||
| Children | 3 | ||
| Education | Harvard University (BA, JD) | ||
| Signature |  | ||
| Website | Campaign website | ||
| Chinese name | |||
| Chinese | 吳弭 | ||
| Hanyu Pinyin | Wú Mǐ | ||
| |||||||||||
| ||
|---|---|---|
|
Boston City Councilor
Mayor of Boston
 |
||
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Michelle Wu (Chinese: 吳弭;[1] pinyin: Wú Mǐ; born January 14, 1985) is an American lawyer and politician who has been the mayor of Boston since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first woman and the first person of color to be elected to the position.[2][3] At age 36, she was also the youngest person to have been elected to the position in nearly a century.
The daughter of Taiwanese American immigrants, Wu graduated with honors from Harvard University and Harvard Law School. From 2014 to 2021, she was the first Asian-American woman to serve on the Boston City Council and was its president from 2016–2018. While on the Boston City Council, Wu authored several ordinances that were enacted. This included an ordinance to prevent the city from contracting with health insurers that discriminate in their coverage against transgender people. She also authored ordinances to have the city protect wetlands, support adaptation to climate change, enact a plastic bag ban, adopt Community Choice Aggregation, and provide paid parental leave to municipal employees. As a city councillor, Wu also partook in a successful effort to adopt regulations on short-term rentals.
Wu was elected mayor in 2021. During her mayoralty, Wu has addressed climate change and other concerns through a municipal "Green New Deal" (the Boston Green New Deal) and signed an ordinance to divest city investments from companies that derive more than 15% of their revenue from fossil fuels, tobacco products, or prison facilities. A supporter of fare-free public transportation, Wu has funded a pilot program of fare-free service on three MBTA bus routes, expanding on a single-route pilot program that had previously been started under Kim Janey's preceding acting mayoralty. She also emerged as a prominent opponent of the second Trump administration, with the Trump administration targeting the city over the Boston Trust Act. She was re-elected to a second mayoral term in November 2025.
Early life and education
Michelle Wu was born on January 14, 1985, on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois,[4] to Han and Yu-Min Wu.[5] Her parents are Taiwanese American immigrants.[6][7] They were Taiwanese waishengren; Han and Yu-Min were born and raised in Taipei, while Wu's grandparents had left mainland China during the Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan.[8][9]
Her father, Han Wu, was admitted to the Illinois Institute of Technology for graduate studies; however, neither he nor his wife spoke much English.[5] Raised with Mandarin Chinese as a first language, Wu often interpreted between English and Mandarin for her parents.[10][6][5] When Wu was in high school, her parents separated and her father began living apart from the family; they later divorced.[10][5]
One of four children, Wu graduated from Barrington High School in 2003 as the valedictorian of her class.[11] Wu received perfect scores on the SAT and ACT and in 2003 was selected as a Presidential Scholar from Illinois.[12][5] Wu's parents hoped that she would pursue a career in medicine; in part due to their experiences of the Chinese Civil War, they viewed politics as a corrupt and risky career path. Wu has also recounted that prior to university, she had not known whether she aligned with the Democratic or Republican parties.[5]
Wu moved to the Boston area to attend Harvard University. In 2007, she graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Harvard College.[13] As an undergraduate, she tap danced and taught classes on citizenship at Boston Chinatown on the weekends.[14]
After graduation, Wu worked as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.[15] When her mother began to suffer from mental illness, Wu resigned, moving back to Chicago to care for her mother and two youngest siblings.[14] To support her family financially, Wu started a teahouse business in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago.[4][14] In 2009, she returned to Massachusetts with her mother and youngest siblings[16][17] to earn her J.D. from Harvard Law School,[14] from which she graduated in 2012.[18]
Early career
In 2010, Wu worked in Boston City Hall for Mayor Thomas Menino in the Office of Administration and Finance and later as a Fellow at the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy under Menino's chief of staff, Mitch Weiss.[19][20] In this position, she both designed a streamlined process for restaurants to receive licenses and established a food truck program.[5] Also in 2010, Wu graduated from Emerge Massachusetts, a training program for women who aspire to elected office.[21] The following year, she worked at the Boston Medical Center-based Medical Legal Partnership, where she provided legal services to low-income patients.[19]
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In her first semester at Harvard Law School, one of her professors was Elizabeth Warren. After Wu explained her family's situation to Warren, a long friendship developed between the two women. Warren later reflected, "Michelle was doing something in law school that, in 25 years of teaching, I never knew another student to be doing."[5]
In 2012, Wu worked as the constituency director for Warren's successful senatorial campaign against Scott Brown. In this position, Wu coordinated outreach to all constituency groups, including nonwhites, nonheterosexuals, veterans and women.[22] Wu is considered a protégé of Warren.[23][24]
City Council
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Wu, a member of the Democratic Party,[25] became a member of the Boston City Council in January 2014. Wu was the first Asian American woman to serve on the council, and only the second Asian American member to serve on the council.[16] In late 2014, Wu became the first city councilor in Boston history to give birth while serving on the Boston City Council.[26] From January 2016 to January 2018, she was president of the council, the first nonwhite woman and first Asian American to hold the role.[17][27] When she took office as city council president, Wu was only the third female president in the then-106 year history of the Boston City Council.[28] Wu was regarded as a progressive on the City Council.[29]
Wu was first elected to a Boston City Council at-large seat in November 2013. She finished in second place to incumbent Ayanna Pressley, with the top four finishers being elected to the council.[30] She was re-elected in 2015, 2017, and 2019, placing second behind Pressley in 2015 and placing first in both 2017 and 2019.[31][32][33] In 2021 election, Wu decided not to seek a fifth term on the City Council and to run for mayor instead.[34]
Paid parental leave
In April 2015, the Boston City Council passed a paid parental leave ordinance that was authored by Wu.[35] The ordinance provided city employees with six weeks of paid parental leave after childbirth, stillbirth, or adoption.[17] Mayor Marty Walsh supported Wu's ordinance prior to its adoption[36] and signed it into law in May.[37] Wu had conceived this legislation after her own first pregnancy when she learned firsthand (after giving birth in December 2014) that municipal employees were not being offered paid child leave.[38] In 2021, Wu proposed the idea of expanding this paid child leave policy to also provide leave for the broader category of pregnancy loss, rather than strictly for stillbirths.[39] In September, by voice vote, the Boston City Council passed an ordinance written by Councilor Lydia Edwards and co-sponsored by Wu and Annissa Essaibi George that changed the wording of her earlier ordinance from "stillbirth" to "pregnancy loss", and also extended paid family leave to those welcoming a new family member or acting as a caregiver. The ordinance was soon after signed into law by Acting Mayor Kim Janey.[40]
Environmentalism and proposal for a municipal Green New Deal
In October 2017, the Boston City Council voted to unanimously approve a resolution by Wu and fellow councilor Matt O'Malley, having the city adopt Community Choice Aggregation.[41] In November 2017, the Boston City Council unanimously passed an ordinance written by Wu and fellow councilor Matt O'Malley, which implemented a plastic bag ban.[42] In December, Mayor Walsh signed it into law,[43] despite his administration having previously opposed such a ban when it was previously debated by the Council in 2016.[42][44]
In December 2019, the Boston City Council passed an ordinance that Wu had introduced with Matt O'Malley that protects local wetlands and promotes adaption to climate change.[45] Mayor Walsh signed it into law later that month.[46] For years, Wu spearheaded efforts to have the city divest its financial resources from fossil fuels.[47][48]
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In August 2020, Wu released plans for "Boston Green New Deal & Just Recovery" program.[23][49][50] The proposal aims to achieve carbon neutrality (net-zero carbon footprint) for the municipal government buildings by 2024, running the city on 100% renewable energy by 2030, and achieving citywide carbon neutrality by 2040.[50] The proposal calls for creating "just and resilient development" through the establishment of affordable green overlay districts and standard community benefits agreements;[49][50] priority planning zones informed by urban heat island maps, in order to expand the urban tree canopy;[49][51] and a "local blue new deal" for coasts and oceans, using coastal and ocean resources for clean energy generation, sustainable food systems, carbon capture, and jobs.[49][51]
Housing
Wu was the leading force in efforts to regulate short-term rentals of housing units.[52] Wu pushed for increased restrictions, including the elimination of investor units, and faced targeted criticism from short-term rental platform Airbnb for this.[53][54][55] Boston adopted an ordinance, supported by Wu, that restricted short-term rentals to owner-occupied housing units, required hosts to register with the city, and required the city to collect and publish data on short-term rentals.[56][57][58]
Wu, since at least 2019,[59] supported the idea of reviving rent stabilization in Boston,[60] which would first require a change to state law.[61] She argued that it will assist in preventing nonwhite people from being pushed out of Boston.[16] While Wu and some other Boston City Council members came out in support of the idea of rent stabilization in 2019, it was a contentious issue in the city government, with other council members and Mayor Walsh voicing opposition to it.[62]
Law enforcement
In June 2020, Wu, alongside fellow city councilors Lydia Edwards and Julia Mejia, introduced an ordinance that would establish an unarmed community safety crisis response system, moving the response to nonviolent 9-1-1 calls away from the Boston Police Department, and instead transferring the response to non-law enforcement agencies and trained health professionals.[63][64] In 2020, Wu was one of eight city councilors to sign a letter urging Mayor Walsh to decrease the Boston Police Department's annual budget by 10%. Activists had been calling for such a cut, in order to instead allot that money to COVID-19 pandemic relief, housing and food access, and other programs that would benefit nonwhite people.[65] In June 2020, Wu was one of five members of the Boston City Council to vote against Mayor Walsh's 2021 operating budget for the city.[66] While the budget made $12 million in cuts to the overtime budget of the police department, Wu argued that the city was still contractually obligated to pay for every hour of overtime work, meaning that it was inconsequential what the line item in the city budget proposed.[67]
Wu voiced her desire to "demilitarize" the city's police department.[68] Wu led an effort to take account of the Boston Police Department's military equipment.[69] Wu also advocated for closing loopholes in the policy of the Boston Police Department regarding body cameras.[68]
Advocacy for free public transport
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Wu proposed eliminating fares for local public transit. Wu argued that the MBTA should explore the possibility of eliminating fares in a January 31, 2019 op-ed published in The Boston Globe.[70] Later in 2019, she and fellow councilor Kim Janey proposed making the MBTA Route 28 bus fare-free.[71] Janey would later fund a pilot program to make the bus route fare-free for three months while acting mayor in 2021.[72] As mayor, Wu extended the pilot on the route 28 bus, adding two additional routes to serve other lower-income areas of the city free of charge for all riders beginning March 1, 2022, and extending for two years.[73] The charges were picked up by the city using funds from $8 million in federal pandemic relief funds.[74] Wu's advocacy is seen as popularizing the idea of fare-free public transportation in Boston.[75] Crediting Wu as a leader on fare-free public transit, in January 2021, the editorial board of The Boston Globe endorsed the idea of making the city's buses fare-free.[76] Wu's promotion of fare-free public transit also inspired Lawrence, Massachusetts mayor Daniel Rivera to implement it in his city.[77][78]
Other matters addressed as city councilor
Wu advocated for reforming the city's permitting system.[79] Wu called for the abolition of the Boston Planning & Development Agency,[23] which she characterized as being extremely politicized and "opaque".[60] In 2019, her office published a 72-page report on the matter.[80][81] Wu came into conflict with Mayor Walsh over his appointees to the city's Zoning Board of Appeals.[82][23]
In March 2019, the City Council unanimously passed the Good Food Purchasing Program ordinance authored by Wu. The ordinance set new requirements for public food purchasers, such as Boston Public Schools.[83][84]
In June 2014, the Boston City Council unanimously passed an ordinance Wu coauthored with fellow councilwoman Ayanna Pressley, which prohibits Boston's city government, "from contracting with any health insurer that denies coverage or discriminates in the amount of premium, policy fees, or rates charged...because of gender identity or expression". This ordinance guaranteed healthcare (including gender reassignment surgery, hormone therapy, and mental health services) to transgender city employees and dependents. Wu called the ordinance, "a matter of equity and of fairness".[85][86] The ordinance had the support of Mayor Walsh prior to its passage.[87]
Wu partnered with fellow councilor Kim Janey to probe the city's process for awarding municipal contracts. Their findings were the impetus for a subsequent move by the city to start looking at ways to diversify the recipients of city contracts.[88]
Other political activity as city councilor
During the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primary, Wu endorsed the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.[89] Wu was among the earliest supporters of Ayanna Pressley's successful 2018 Democratic primary election challenge to incumbent U.S. congressman Mike Capuano.[90] In the 2018 election cycle, Wu also endorsed Jay Gonzalez's unsuccessful campaign in the Massachusetts gubernatorial election.[91] Wu endorsed Elizabeth Warren's 2020 presidential campaign in a speech at Warren's official campaign launch in February 2019.[92] Wu was a campaign surrogate for Warren, campaigning on her behalf in New Hampshire[93] and Iowa ahead of those states' primary and caucuses, respectively.[94]
Recognition received as city councilor
At the end of 2013, the readers of Boston magazine voted Wu to be named the magazine's 2013 "Rookie of the Year", one three political awards given by the magazine that year.[95] In 2016, Frank Bruni of The New York Times named Wu as one of the United States', "14 Young Democrats to Watch".[96] In 2017, the Massachusetts Democratic Party awarded Wu its Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Award, which it considers its highest honor.[97] In March 2018, Wu was among six finalists to be honored as a "Rising Star" by EMILY's List, a national group that supports female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights.[98] The next month, Wu was listed as one of the "100 Most Influential People in Boston" by Boston magazine, being listed 31st on the list.[99] In 2019, Rachel Allen of The Atlantic wrote that Wu had emerged as one of Boston's "most effective politicians".[100]
Mayoralty
Mayoral election campaigns
2021 mayoral campaign
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Wu had long been viewed a future mayoral prospect, fielding questions about whether she'd consider one day running as far back as 2016.[101] Since at least 2019, Wu was viewed as a potential challenger to incumbent mayor Marty Walsh, if Walsh sought reelection in 2021.[102] She announced her candidacy on September 15, 2020.[103] She was regarded to be challenging Walsh from the political left.[104]
Walsh was designated by President-elect Joe Biden to be his nominee for Secretary of Labor on January 7, 2021, leaving the mayor's race an open seat.[105][106] Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed Wu for mayor two days later.[107] By September 2021, Wu was widely considered to be the front-runner in the nonpartisan primary election, with a significant polling lead.[106][108][109] Wu ultimately placed first in the nonpartisan primary and advanced to the general election, where she faced fellow city council member Annissa Essaibi George. Other candidates in the primary election had been acting mayor Kim Janey, city councilor Andrea Campbell, and former city economic chief John Barros.[110][111]
On September 25, Acting Mayor Kim Janey, who placed fourth in the nonpartisan primary, endorsed Wu for the general election.[112] Wu was viewed as the front-runner in the general election campaign, with advantages in endorsements, including from cultural groups,[113] Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, both of Massachusetts' U.S. Senators (Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren),[114][115] and the editorial board of The Boston Globe.[116] Ellen Barry of The New York Times characterized Wu as having benefited as a candidate from her years of engagement with the city's residents as a city councilor. She opined that Wu's work while on the City Council had introduced her to many of the city's voters and that Wu was, "difficult to caricature as a radical."[117] In both the primary and general elections, Wu ran on a progressive-oriented agenda.[117]
On November 2, 2021, Wu won the election with over 64% of the vote, becoming the first woman and first nonwhite person to be elected mayor of Boston.[2][118] Wu won sizable margins among various demographic groups, leading her victory to be characterized as one with a multiethnic coalition.[117][119] Wu was sworn in on November 16, 2021.[120] At 36 years of age, Wu was the youngest person elected mayor of Boston in almost a century.[121]
2025 mayoral campaign
In the 2025 Boston mayoral election, challenger Josh Kraft's campaign against Wu vastly outspent her campaign. Kraft spent record amounts for a Boston preliminary election.[122][123] However, in the September 9 preliminary election Wu received more than 71% of the vote, having a 49–point lead over Kraft that was described by The Boston Globe as "staggering"[124] and the Dorchester Reporter as a "blowout".[125] Two days after the preliminary, Kraft ended his candidacy.[126] With Kraft filing to have his name removed from the ballot, and with no other candidate receiving the sufficient number of votes to qualify to replace him, Wu ran unopposed in the general election.[127][128]
Transition into office
Wu had a shorter transition into office than most mayors of Boston due to the fact that there was no permanent incumbent mayor at the time of the election. Under Boston's city charter, in such circumstances, new mayors are sworn in as soon as is conveniently possible after the results of the election are certified.[129] Before the election, on September 24, candidates Wu and Essaibi George had met with Acting Mayor Janey at the George Francis Parkman House and mutually agreed on November 16 date as a tentative date for a transition of power for the mayoralty.[130][131] Wu would ultimately take office as mayor on that planned date.[132] This meant that she had only a two-week period between her election and assumption of office.[129]
Relationship with the Boston City Council
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In March 2023, Emma Platoff of the Boston Globe credited Wu's ability to frequently prevail on matters that she and the City Council had not been aligned on to Wu's own "political savvy", the strong legal power afforded to mayors of Boston, divisions on the City Council that gave the body a weaker negotiating position, and the inexperience of new council members.[133]
Environment and climate change
Wu serves on the steering committee on Climate Mayors.[134] She has supported the resolution authored by Senator Ed Markey and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to recognize a duty of the federal government to create a Green New Deal.[135]
Within the City, Wu signed an ordinance on November 22, 2021, to divest city investments from companies that derive more than 15% of their revenue from fossil fuels, tobacco products, or prison facilities. This is seen as being part of her pursuit of a municipal Green New Deal for Boston. The process entails the divestment of $65 million in city assets. The new rules do not apply to Boston's employee pension fund, which is governed by state law.[136] While a member of the city council, she had fought for the adoption of such a policy.[48] On May 16, 2022, Wu pledged that the city would carry out a "Green New Deal" for Boston Public Schools (BPS) school buildings, which will see renovation of existing facilities and the construction new ones. This plan expands the funding the city is to invest in school construction from the $1 billion outlined in Marty Walsh's 2015 BuildBPS plan to $2 billion.[137] She then unveiled a proposed home rule petition in August 2022 that would see the city request entrance to the state's pilot program for municipalities to ban fossil fuels from most new buildings, with the exception of labs and hospitals. The following month, the Boston City Council approved the home rule petition 9–3. The next step is for the state legislature to rule on whether to grant the petition.[138] As part of a $20 million housing program funded through COVID recovery funds, Wu's mayoral administration is planning to launch the "Large Building Green Energy Retrofits Program" providing building owners of buildings with fifteen or more units up to $10,000 to support efforts to reduce their buildings' energy use through "deep energy retrofits". The program is targeted at retrofitting the city's existing housing stock.[139] In July 2023, Wu signed an executive order halting the use of fossil fuels in new municipal buildings and major renovations.[140] In 2024 Wu's climate push had mixed results, including winning a $10 million federal grant for climate-related job training and a failed vote with the Boston Zoning Commission to accelerate the net-zero requirement for all new buildings.[141][142][143]
Wu has called attention to the health risks that many residents, and disproportionately nonwhite people, face due to air pollution from highways, especially in Chinatown.[16][144][145] In April 2022, on Earth Day, as part of the city's Climate Ready Boston efforts, Wu unveiled the Heat Resilience for Boston plan. This plan centers on combatting the impacts of rising heat extremes, focusing on the "environmental justice communities" of Chinatown, Dorchester, East Boston, Mattapan, and Roxbury. Wu also announced the creation of the Boston Extreme Temperatures Response Task Force to coordinate efforts across the city related to handling heat extremes.[146]
COVID-19 pandemic
In December 2021, Wu announced a city COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Under the mandate, people ages 12 and older, in order to enter indoor public venues (bars, restaurants, gyms, theaters, and sports venues) in Boston, would be required to show proof of at least their first COVID-19 vaccine dose by January 15, 2022, and of full vaccination by February 15, 2022. The mandate promoted opposition, and in an interview with Boston Public Radio, Wu stated that she received racist messages in response to vaccine requirements.[147][148][149][150] Some opponents circulated false rumors about Wu being hospitalized for panic attacks while in office.[151] On February 19, 2022, Wu announced that the city would end its proof-of-vaccine mandate for public places with immediate effect.[152]
The Wu administration also required city employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 (with exceptions for employees with medical reasons and religious objectors), and about 94% of city employees were in compliance with that requirement by late January 2022.[153] Wu extended the deadline for city employees to comply.[153] Some public employee unions fought the mandate in court, arguing that the mandate rules should be subject to collective bargaining.[154] A Massachusetts Appeals Court judge sided with the unions, blocking the city worker mandate.[152] Wu faced persistent demonstrations outside of her house protesting her COVID measures.[155]
Housing and development
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Wu has given far fewer appointments for one-on-one meetings with private developers than her predecessors did, giving them fewer opportunities to directly lobby her on policies.[156] In December 2021, Wu signed into law an ordinance amending the city's zoning code by eliminating off-street parking minimums for new affordable developments where 60% of the units are income-restricted at 100% the area median income in order to remove a barrier for the construction of new units of affordable housing.[157][158] In October 2022, Wu signed an executive order that changed the approval process in the city for new income-restricted affordable housing developments. The order sought to halve the time that the approval process takes. Impacting nine city agencies (including the BPDA), the order established a separate review and approval process for affordable housing developments and requested the BPDA give priority to such developments.[159]
In her early months as mayor, Wu moved hundreds of unhoused individuals that had been living in the Mass and Cass area to temporary housing.[160] In January 2022, Wu designated $50 million to fund improvements to the Mildred C. Hailey Apartments complex in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood.[161] In January 2022, Wu also signed an executive order to adopt a municipal Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy. This made Boston the largest city in the United States to adopt such a policy.[162] Wu's 2020 Municipal Green New Deal proposal calls for "decommodifying housing"[163] through the expansion of cooperative housing, community land trusts, and community ownerships.[49] It also calls for the establishment of a renters' right to counsel,[163] guaranteeing legal representation to tenants in eviction proceedings.[49]
Since as early as 2019,[59] Wu has supported reviving rent stabilization in Boston,[60] which would first require a change to state law.[61] In March 2022, Wu announced the creation of a Rent Stabilization Advisory Committee, which will report to the city's Office of Housing on Strategies with advice on means to stabilize rents in the city and to combat the displacement of tenants, with the aim of creating a proposal to present to the City Council.[164] On March 8, 2023, in a 11–2 vote the Boston City Council consented to two home rule petitions proposed by Wu: one asking the state government to permit the city to implement a form of rent control, and the other asking the state to permit Boston to implement Wu's plan to restructure the Boston Planning & Development Agency. The two petitions will need to be approved by the state government in order for Boston to be granted these permissions.[165]
Transportation
Boston's public transportation operator, the MBTA, is a division of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT),[166] limiting the power that the mayor of Boston has over transportation in the city. Nevertheless, Wu has taken actions and voiced positions related to the city's transportation.
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In December 2021 Wu extended by two months the fare-free pilot program for the MBTA Route 28 bus that was started under the acting mayoralty of Kim Janey. She did this while engaging in talks with the MBTA to further extend the pilot program.[167] The City had, in November 2021, announced that its data showed that during the pilot program ridership had increased to an excess of 70,000 in weekly ridership. Pre COVID-pandemic weekly ridership on the route had been 47,000, making the COVID-era pilot program ridership significantly greater despite the general impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public transportation rider. The city concluded that, in comparison to ridership trends on comparable routes of the MBTA, the increase in ridership was directly attributable to the pilot program.[168] A later more in-depth 2022 analysis found an overall 38% increase in weekday ridership from 7,500 before the pandemic (with fares) to 10,200 during the September and October periods during the pilot program.[169][170]
In mid-November 2021, Wu sent an appropriations order to the Boston City Council to ask for approval to appropriate $8 million of federal funds to fund two years of fare-free service on the MBTA Route 23, 28, and 29 buses. These buses serve the Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury communities.[171][172] At the start of December, the City Council approved the appropriations order 12–1.[173] On February 9, 2022, Wu and MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak announced that the two-year program for the three routes to be fare-free was officially agreed to and would be launched on March 1, 2022.[174][175]
Policing
In July 2022, following a seven-month search, Wu named Michael Cox as the new commissioner of the Boston Police Department.[176]
In June 2023, Wu vetoed a $5 million cut in Boston Police and Veterans Services departments proposed by the City Council calling their attempt "illusory, as the city is obligated to cover salary and overtime expenses incurred by the department," and that the city's budget should be "built on a foundation of effective delivery of city services that are central to our residents' quality of life."[177]
In December 2023, Wu reached a contract agreement with the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association.[178] In the terms of the contract, the union agreed that officers would lose the option to use arbitration to appeal firings or other disciplinary measures if they are convicted of certain crimes.[178][179] The contract also saw the union agree to allow pay details of the department to be made public, and for there to be more strict outlines on when officers are permitted to take medical leave. Yawu Miller of the Bay State Banner described it as being, "the first [contract] in which [Boston] city officials have managed to secure significant reforms from the Patrolmen’s union."[178] It was approved unanimously by the Boston City Council on December 13, 2024.[179] In March 2024, a similar contract was reached with the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society.[180]
In her first term as mayor, Wu saw great success at meeting her goal of lowering the city's rates of violence. Over the course of 2023, Boston experienced the fewest homicides it had seen in any year on record.[181] 2023 also saw a new record low for gun violence rates in the city.[182] In 2024, the city a significant further reduction in its homicide rate.[181][183]In 2024, Boston recorded what local law enforcement hailed as one of the city's safest years on record, reaching a new recorded low number of homicides.[181][182][184] Murder rates in Boston have been characterized as "plummeting".[185] The number of shooting fatalities was noted to have greatly decreased over the previous three years.[186] By the end of 2024, the city had exceeded its objective of reaching a 20% reduction in annual homicides ahead of schedule.[182] By 2024 and 2025, data indicated that Boston was safer than many similarly-sized cities in the United States.[187] An article published by the Vera Institute of Justice in September 2024 found Boston is one of the safest major cities in the United States. In the first half of 2025, Boston homicide rates increased from the year prior.[188] However, its rates were still similar to rates in the first-half of 2023, a year which had previously been a record-low year for murders in the city. Crime researcher Thomas Abt observed, "Boston's success in driving gun violence downward now means that small increases in homicides look large in percentage terms. Overall, the city's anti-violence efforts are a success."[181]
_in_a_congressional_hearing_room_on_March_5,_2025_(1).jpeg)
As Donald Trump took office in early 2025 for his second presidency, Wu and the new presidential administration emerged as being publicly at odds over the administrations dislike of the existing Boston Trust Act (a so-called "sanctuary city" law), and Wu's steadfast defense of the local law.[189] In March 2025, Wu complied with a congressional subpoena and testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in hearings about major "sanctuary city" policies and cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The hearings featured several other mayors of large American cities.[190] John L. Milcek of MassLive described Wu's performance in the more than five hours of hearings as a "star turn" for her, writing, "the Democratic mayor deftly parried jibes from Republicans who sounded like they’d never set foot in Boston".[191] Sri Taylor of Bloomberg News described the hearing as having carried "high stakes" for Wu, and credited her performance in the hearing with having garnering her a "newfound role as both a favorite foil for Republican critics in Washington and a capable messenger for Democrats," noting that while Republicans on the committee had hoped to hurt Wu's reputation in the hearings, "It was Wu who walked away with a series of sound bites defending Boston and Democrat priorities that made the rounds on social media and bolstered her national presence."[192] In September 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a lawsuit against Boston and its police department, asserting that the Boston Trust Act (a so-called "sanctuary city" ordinance adopted in 2014) is a violation of federal law. Wu is named a co-defendant in her official capacity as mayor.[189][193][194]
In Wu's bid for re-election in 2025, her candidacy received an early endorsement from the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association and affiliated emergency medical services (EMS) unions. In their endorsement, the union's leadership praised her performance in office,[195] and noted that this marked the unions' first endorsement of an incumbent mayor's re-election in thirty years.[196][197]
Racial equity
Wu has expressed a belief that her cabinet should reflect the city's population, arguing that that is consequential towards making the city's government more responsive to its different communities. Nonwhites hold a majority in her cabinet. As of August 2022, Wu's cabinet had thirteen black members, thirteen white members, six Latino members, and two Asian members.[198] In December 2023, Wu organized an "Electeds of Color" holiday party, an affinity group event which excluded white members of the City Council. While Council member Frank Baker called the event "divisive" and "inflammatory," Wu refused to apologize.[199]
In January 2022, Wu signed an executive order to adopt a municipal Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy. This made Boston the largest city in the United States to adopt such a policy.[162]
In May 2022, Boston awarded a $17 million contract to City Fresh Foods, a local black-owned business, to be a vendor for Boston City Schools. This was the largest non-construction contract that the city had awarded to a certified black-owned business in its history. This has been credited as being indicative of Wu's impact on how the city government views matters of diversity. The contract has also been credited as helping to achieve the goals of the Good Food Purchasing Program that was created by an ordinance that had been authored by Wu as a city councilwoman.[200][201]
Education and childcare
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In May 2022, Wu unveiled plans for a "Green New Deal" for Boston Public School buildings, which doubles the capital spending that the city will devote to the construction of new and renovated school buildings to $2 billion compared to the $1 million that had been outlined in former mayor Marty Walsh's 2015 BuildBPS plan. Wu has pledged for the city to have a more equitable and transparent process for school construction and capital improvements than in the past and that the process will involve input from students, educators, and parents.[137] In September 2022, Wu announced the creation of the Cabinet for Worker Empowerment. One of the tasks of this new department is providing oversight to this "Green New Deal" for the city's schools.[202] Another of the department's tasks is to establish a trust fund for childcare.[202]
In July 2022, Wu signed an executive order outlining the formula for what funds developers building in the city's downtown must contribute to fund child care services. This executive order builds upon a policy implemented in 1989 under the mayoralty of Raymond Flynn, which requires that new commercial developments in the city's downtown provide childcare services on-site or otherwise fund resources for off-site childcare spaces. However, the policy had, previous to Wu's executive order, been difficult to enforce due to the fact that the policy did not previous provide a clear definition of the amounts that developers needed to pay.[203]
Wu opposed proposals by the state to place Boston Public Schools into state receivership, which arose from negative assessments of the city's schools in studies that were taken in 2020, before her mayoralty.[204] In June 2022, Wu and Massachusetts state education officials settled on an agreement to improve Boston Public Schools, averting receivership.[205] In February 2023, Wu vetoed a city council ordinance to advance a home rule petition that requested that the state make the city's public school board an elected body. Wu wrote that she, "deeply respect[s]" the advocates' of the ordinance, but, "cannot support legislative changes that would compromise our ability to stabilize and support the Boston Public Schools during this critical period."[206] Previously, when she had run for mayor in 2021 Wu's education plan had called for a restructuring of the Boston School Committee that would have seen the committee have a majority of its seats be elected.[207][208] Wu backed away from this support of a transition to a partially elected board after becoming mayor, arguing that it was an inopportune time for such a change to take place.[209]
Business, labor, and economic development
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It has been observed that Wu's approach to dealing with the city's business elite has differed from her predecessors. In May 2023, Brian McGrory of The Boston Globe observed that Wu has given greater precedence toward attending to other municipal concerns than she does to giving an audience to the city's business elites. Describing Wu as "a different kind of mayor, with a different view of her city" from her predecessors, McGrory wrote, "when Wu sets her priorities...[and] when she imagines her legacy, she’s not gazing at the city’s skyline or at the people who are building it. Rather, she's obsessed with the seemingly intractable problems that fester in the shadows of those gleaming towers."[210] Also in May 2023, Shirley Leung (also of The Boston Globe) similarly observed that, "previous mayors have welcomed tête-à-têtes with real estate developers and other captains of industry to discuss projects or other matters. Often, those were one-on-one meetings. [...] Instead, she prefers to assemble groups of leaders to help shape specific policies and forge public-private partnerships...the noticeable change in approach continues to ruffle the feathers of those who are used to having the ear of the mayor, all of which is perpetuating a narrative that Wu is indifferent to business interests."[211] It has been also been observed by The Boston Globe that Wu grants substantially fewer meetings to real estate developers than her processors had, giving them less opportunities to directly lobby her.[156]
As a city councilor, Wu had called for reforming the procurement process for city contracts in order to ensure that businesses owned by nonwhites, women, and city residents are given a "fair shot" at winning contracts. She also called for the city to provide assistance for nonwhite entrepreneurs as well as support for small neighborhood businesses. She also called for greater government transparency regarding corporate tax breaks,[212] and introduced an ordinance in 2019 that was aimed at accomplishing that.[213] In December 2017, after the Boston City Council passed the "Ordinance on Equity in Opportunity for City Contracting", Wu and fellow city councilor Ayanna Pressley authored an op-ed published in the Dorchester Reporter which hailed the ordinance and argued that the city needed to "continue to create pipelines for local residents and businesses owned by women and people of color."[214]
In August 2022, Boston received a $23 million American Rescue Plan challenge grant from the Economic Development Administration to establish a Regional Workforce Training System aimed at training and placing individuals for 4,618 quality jobs in targeted industries over three years starting in October 2022. The Mayor's Office of Workforce Development had been the lead applicant, working with other there parties and organizations in their grant application.[215] On Labor Day 2022, Wu announced the creation of the Cabinet for Worker Empowerment. One of the tasks this new department was assigned is overseeing the creation of more job training centers in the city.[202]
Recognition received as mayor
In 2022, Wu was honored by Gold House (which honors those of Asian Pacific descent). The organization honored her and fellow mayors Bruce Harrell and Aftab Pureval as having made the "most impact" in the field of advocacy and policy.[216] The Harvard College Class of 2022 selected Wu to be their Class Day speaker.[20] Wu had been the first alumnus of Harvard College to be elected mayor of Boston since Malcolm Nichols was elected in 1925.[217] In 2022, Time magazine recognized Wu in its Time100 Next list of emerging leaders. The article accompanying her entry was authored by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.[218][219] In 2022, Wu received the "Catalyst for Justice Award" from Massachusetts Public Health Association.[220] The Boston Bar Association gave Wu the "Voice of Change" award at its 2023 Beacon Awards for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.[221][222]
In 2022, Boston magazine ranked Wu at the top of its list of "100 Most Influential Bostonians".[223] In 2023, she was ranked ninth on the annual list, which had been expanded to now list 150 individuals.[224] In 2024, the magazine ranked Wu as second on the list behind only Governor Maura Healey, describing the two as being the city's "power duo".[225] In 2025, she was ranked seventh on the list, with Governor Healey again ranked one spot above her, and Wu's newborn daughter also being given an honorable-mention with a 151st spot on the list of 150.[226]
Wu has also received recognition honoring her for supporting the arts. In 2023 Mayor Wu received the annual "Champion Award" for her dedication to the arts and education in Massachusetts.[227] That same year, Wu and former acting mayor Janey received the Boston Arts Academy Foundation's "Champion Award".[228]
Political stances and ideology
Wu's political outlook extends the concept of "laboratories of democracy" (which is conventionally used to describe U.S. state governments) to local government: aiming for Boston to provide proof of concept for various progressive reforms.[5]
Both during her tenure as mayor and as a member of the Boston City Council, Wu has been described as being a progressive.[133][29] Wu has also been described as a liberal.[229][230] Early into her council career, Wu identified herself as a "pragmatic progressive".[231] In September 2022, Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times described Wu as a "progressive but not aggressively ideological" mayor.[119] In November 2021, Ellen Barry of The New York Times opined that while Wu is a strong progressive, she is also "difficult to caricature as a radical."[117] In 2024, E. Tammy Kim of The New Yorker described the political philosophy that Wu promotes as, "progressive pragmatism"[104] Benjamin Wallace-Wells (also of The New Yorker) opined in 2025 that, in her first term, Wu had both demonstrated a more pragmatic approach to local governance than other left-leaning American officials, and had had a more successful tenure than other left-leaning local officials.[232]
A number of analysts and some local voices in Boston's left-wing politics have suggested that over the course of her first term, Wu moderated away from some of left-wing positions of she had held previously.[233] Other local progressives have countered this, asserting that Wu has remained committed to progressive causes. Wu, herself, has argued that as mayor she has remained guided by the same "values, principles, goals" that had guided her previously. In a May 2025 profile, Emma Platoff and Niki Griswold of The Boston Globe opined that Wu had indeed shifted the tone with which she spoke on issues such as environmentalism (noting that Wu had by 2025 largely ceased referring to her environmental policies as a "Green New Deal") and policing, and had moderated on several specific stances related to policing. However, Platoff and Griswold also characterized Wu as having "made strides on many progressive causes" in her first term as mayor, including on police reform and environmentalism.[234] She has continued to be characterized as a progressive by analysts.[235]
Wu has expressed a view that elections can be won by speaking to the public's desire for "government to work and to get things done that matter and that will make a difference in their lives," believing that laying out a vision and policies for such change is more effective than mere slogans at attracting voter support.[236] She has been widely described as a protégée of Elizabeth Warren.[23][24] WGBH columnist Adam Reilly has described Wu as also having been a mentee of the late Boston Mayor Thomas Menino[237] (whose administration Wu had worked in).[238]
Abortion
As a city councilor and as mayor, Wu has positioned herself in support of protecting access to abortion care.[98][239] In 2019, several years prior to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, Wu urged Massachusetts state lawmakers to adopt the Roe Act, a proposed state statue intended to codify the protections for abortion care provided by the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision.[240]
Employment practices
In February 2014, the Boston City Council unanimously passed a resolution authored by Wu which voiced the City Council's support for the Massachusetts Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights that was pending before the Massachusetts State Legislature.[241]
As City Councilor, Wu voiced support for a "fair work week", $15 minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, protections for freelancers.[212]
In October 2018, Wu proposed a "fair work week" ordinance, which would have required all city contractors to give employees at least two weeks of notice prior to changing their schedules, and would require employers to compensate workers for late schedule changes.[242]
Wu’s 2020 proposal for a "food justice" agenda for Boston called for an increase to the minimum wage paid to food-sector workers and for providing guaranteed paid sick leave to them.[16] It also took a stance in favor of gradually phasing out tipped wage for restaurant and bar workers.[243]
As a city councilor, Wu authored an adopted ordinance which provided paid parental leave to municipal employees.[35] Before the passage of the ordinance by the City Council, Wu and Mayor Marty Walsh co-authored an op-ed in The Boston Globe that called paid parental leave, "a must for working families".[36]
Transit
Wu advocated for late night public transit in her original platform when running for City Council in 2012.[244] In this vein, in 2015, she voiced her support for having the MBTA extend its pilot "late-night T" program, which kept transit service open late on the weekends.[245]
Wu is a supporter of fare-free public transit. Wu argued in a January 31, 2019 op-ed published in The Boston Globe that the MBTA should explore the elimination of transit fares, writing
Eliminating financial barriers must be one of the big ideas we explore, because geographic mobility underlies economic mobility. Access to public transit is more than just a calculus about the number of cars taken off the road. Cities that have adopted free public transportation have benefited from a surge in transit equity, with more low-income residents, seniors, and youth using transit to access opportunities. In a city and region where income inequality and racial disparities reflect our geographic segregation, cost and unreliability of public transportation adds an additional barrier for youth, people of color, and everyone who has been left out of the prosperity of our city. Removing this barrier would unleash the full potential of our workforce and talent from every neighborhood.[70]
She further argued that Boston should set an example for the rest of the county in free access to transit, likening it to past municipal innovations the city introduced.[70] Wu's 2020 proposal for a municipal Green New Deal incorporated her proposal for fare-free public transit.[49]
Wu has supported federal legislation on the matter of fare-free public transit, including helping Senator Ed Markey and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley in 2020 to promote their proposed "Freedom to Move Act".[246][247] The act would provide grants to communities that eliminate transit fares.[248]
Wu's advocacy is regarded to have popularized the idea of fare-free public transportation in Boston.[249] Crediting Wu as a leader on fare-free public transit, in January 2021, The Boston Globe's editorial board endorsed the idea of making the city's buses fare-free.[250] Wu's promotion of fare-free public transit also inspired Lawrence, Massachusetts mayor Daniel Rivera to implement it in his city.[251]
Both Kim Janey, as acting mayor, and Wu, as mayor, took steps that introduced fare-free transit on several bus routes in the city.
Recreational cannabis
In 2016, Wu supported Massachusetts Question 4 to legalize the recreational use of cannabis in Massachusetts. This put her at odds with Mayor Marty Walsh, who was a prominent opponent of legalization.[252]
Government reform
As a city councilor, Wu voiced support for participatory budgeting.[212] In 2020, she expressed support for the prospect of implementing ranked voting reform in Boston's city elections.[253]
Personal life
Caretaking of mother and siblings
When Wu was in her early twenties, having recently graduated from Harvard University, and living in Boston and working for Boston Consulting Group, her mother developed severe mental illness and was diagnosed with schizophrenia.[5] Upon hearing that her mother was exhibiting erratic behavior, Wu returned home and thereafter became the primary caretaker of her mother and two youngest siblings (the youngest of whom was eleven-years-old).[6][10][5]
Wu secured medical care for her mother. She also opened a teahouse, hoping her mother might recover enough to run it.[10][254] Eventually, Wu entered Harvard Law School and relocated with her mother and youngest sibling to Boston.[6][104] She became the legal guardian of her youngest sibling, and became actively involved in the sibling's education at the Eliot School of Boston (a public K–8 school).[6] Wu has said that she regards the experience of assuming the care of her mother and younger siblings to have been the most important turning point of her life.[5]
Marriage, children, pregnancies and faith
While attending Harvard College, Wu began a long-distance relationship with Conor Pewarski, having been introduced by mutual friends at a Harvard–Yale football game party that she hosted. Pewarski had been a Yale student. When Wu moved back to Chicago in order to help her mother and sisters following the onset of her mother's mental illness, Pewarski abandoned a fledging career in Hollywood film production and moved with her. When Wu attended Harvard Law School, he continued to live with her.[255] Pewarski proposed to Wu on December 7, 2011 on Cambridge Common; they married on September 8, 2012.[256] The couple now live in Boston's Roslindale neighborhood with their two sons and her mother.[23][100][257] Pewarski worked as a community lender at East Boston Savings Bank until resigning his position shortly after Wu took office as mayor,[255] opting to become a stay-at-home parent after Wu became mayor.[258]
_at_9-11_memorial_wreath_laying_ceremony_in_2024_54200246556).jpg)
In December 2014, Wu gave birth to her oldest child, a boy, thereby becoming the first member in the history of the Boston City Council to give birth while in office.[38] Her experience of learning that employees of Boston's government lacked the option of paid child leave inspired her successful ordinance to create such a policy.[38] Wu's second son was born in 2017.[259] Wu opted to forgo maternity leave.[258] When she returned to work after each pregnancy, Wu brought her newborn sons with her to City Council meetings.[260] As of 2024, Wu enrolls both of her sons in Boston's public school system.[104]
In 2024, Wu shared that, in the years between the birth of her second son and her pregnancy carrying her youngest child, she had had two other pregnancies that had each ended in miscarriage.[258] When speaking to delegates from New Hampshire during an event at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Wu divulged further details on her experiences with pregnancy. Wu drew connections between her experiences and matters in contention amid a post-Dobbs legal landscape, including access to fertilization methods such as in vitro and access to medications such as Mifepristone (which can be used for medical abortion, and had been banned in many states post-Dobbs). Wu divulged that her current pregnancy has been conceived with the aid of "assisted reproductive technology". She also shared that one of her two miscarriages had been a so-called "missed miscarriage" that had occurred at an early stage of pregnancy. The remains of the fetus she was carrying was discovered during an ultrasound Wu had undergone to confirm whether she was pregnant. She further shared that following the discovery that she had had this miscarriage, she took Mifepristone and Misoprostol to aid her body in removing the fetal remains.[261]
In late-July 2024, Wu announced that she was pregnant with a daughter and was due in January 2025.[262] After working that morning, Wu gave birth to her daughter on January 13, 2025 and opted to not take formal maternity leave, adding that the "city runs and our services are ones that people rely on, 24 hours a day, 365 days a week, and I weigh in where I can and where I need to", describing her time as a "working leave".[263] Her newborn daughter has traveled with her to meetings and events as she continued to work as mayor, resulting in Boston Magazine giving her daughter an honorable mention in May 2025 on its annual list of the "Most Influential Bostonians", calling Wu's infant daughter the city's "tiniest VIP".[226]
Hobbies
Wu plays the piano, having started taking lessons when she was 4, and on her first day as mayor, had one put in her office at city hall.[264] In May 2023, she performed the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.[265] She took refresher lessons at Berklee College of Music prior to performing George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue as a guest soloist with the Boston Pops in September 2024.[266] In November 2025, she played Bach's “Ave Maria” alongside Yo-Yo Ma at Boston's Symphony Hall.[267]
Electoral history
City Council
| 2013 Boston at-large City Council election | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Primary election[268] | General election[269] | ||
| Votes | % | Votes | % | |
| Ayanna Pressley (incumbent) | 42,915 | 16.71 | 60,799 | 18.30 |
| Michelle Wu | 29,384 | 11.44 | 59,741 | 17.98 |
| Michael F. Flaherty | 39,904 | 15.54 | 55,104 | 16.59 |
| Stephen J. Murphy (incumbent) | 31,728 | 12.35 | 44,993 | 13.54 |
| Annissa Essaibi George | 12,244 | 4.77 | 30,538 | 9.19 |
| Jeffrey Michael Ross | 13,939 | 5.43 | 28,879 | 8.69 |
| Martin J. Keogh | 15,743 | 6.13 | 26,500 | 7.98 |
| Jack F. Kelly III | 11,909 | 4.64 | 23,967 | 7.22 |
| Catherine M. O'Neill | 10,952 | 4.26 | ||
| Althea Garrison | 10,268 | 4.00 | ||
| Ramon Soto | 9,928 | 3.87 | ||
| Philip Arthur Frattaroli | 5,832 | 2.27 | ||
| Gareth R. Saunders | 5,363 | 2.09 | ||
| Christopher J. Conroy | 3,433 | 1.34 | ||
| Seamus M. Whelan | 3,118 | 1.21 | ||
| Francisco L. White | 2745 | 1.07 | ||
| Douglas D. Wohn | 2,382 | 0.93 | ||
| Frank John Addivinola Jr. | 2,240 | 0.87 | ||
| Keith B. Kenyon | 1,950 | 0.76 | ||
| Jamarhl Crawford | 21† | 0.01 | ||
| all others | 832 | 0.32 | 1,658 | 0.50 |
† write-in votes
| Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ayanna Pressley (incumbent) | 31,783 | 24.21 | |
| Michelle Wu (incumbent) | 28,908 | 22.02 | |
| Michael F. Flaherty (incumbent) | 26,473 | 20.16 | |
| Annissa Essaibi George | 23,447 | 17.86 | |
| Stephen J. Murphy (incumbent) | 19,546 | 14.89 | |
| Jovan J. Lacet write-in | 95 | 0.07 | |
| Charles Yancey write-in | 39 | 0.03 | |
| Jean-Claud Sanon write-in | 25 | 0.02 | |
| Andrea Campbell write-in | 13 | 0.01 | |
| all others | 959 | 0.73 | |
| Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michelle Wu (incumbent) | 65,040 | 24.47 | |
| Ayanna Pressley (incumbent) | 57,520 | 21.64 | |
| Michael F. Flaherty (incumbent) | 51,673 | 19.44 | |
| Annissa Essaibi George (incumbent) | 45,564 | 17.14 | |
| Althea Garrison | 18,253 | 6.87 | |
| Domingos DaRosa | 11,647 | 4.38 | |
| William A. King | 8,773 | 3.30 | |
| Pat Payaso | 6,124 | 2.30 | |
| all others | 1,230 | 0.46 | |
| 2019 Boston at-large City Council election | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Primary election[272] | General election[273] | ||
| Votes | % | Votes | % | |
| Michelle Wu (incumbent) | 26,622 | 19.41 | 41,664 | 20.73 |
| Annissa Essaibi George (incumbent) | 18,993 | 13.85 | 34,109 | 16.97 |
| Michael F. Flaherty (incumbent) | 18,766 | 13.68 | 33,284 | 16.56 |
| Julia Mejia | 10,799 | 7.87 | 22,492 | 11.19 |
| Alejandra Nicole St. Guillen | 11,910 | 8.68 | 22,491 | 11.19 |
| Erin J. Murphy | 9,385 | 6.84 | 16,867 | 8.39 |
| Althea Garrison (incumbent) | 9,720 | 7.09 | 16,189 | 8.05 |
| David Halbert | 6,354 | 4.76 | 13,214 | 6.57 |
| Martin Marty Keogh | 6,246 | 4.55 | ||
| Jeffrey Michael Ross | 5,078 | 3.70 | ||
| Priscilla E. Flint-Banks | 4,094 | 2.98 | ||
| Domingos DaRosa | 2,840 | 2.07 | ||
| Michel Denis | 2,108 | 1.54 | ||
| William A. King | 1,809 | 1.32 | ||
| Herb Alexander Lozano | 1,510 | 1.10 | ||
| all others | 766 | 0.56 | 704 | 0.35 |
Mayor
| 2021 Boston mayoral election | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Primary election[274] | General election[275] | ||
| Votes | % | Votes | % | |
| Michelle Wu | 36,060 | 33.40 | 91,794 | 63.96 |
| Annissa Essaibi George | 24,268 | 22.48 | 51,125 | 35.62 |
| Andrea Campbell | 21,299 | 19.73 | ||
| Kim Janey (acting incumbent) | 21,047 | 19.49 | ||
| John Barros | 3,459 | 3.20 | ||
| Robert Cappucci | 1,185 | 1.10 | ||
| Jon Santiago (withdrawn) | 368 | 0.34 | ||
| Richard Spagnuolo | 286 | 0.26 | ||
| Scattering | 0 | 0.00 | 595 | 0.41 |
| Total | 107,972 | 100 | 144,380 | 100 |
| 2025 Boston mayoral election | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Primary election[276] | General election[277] | ||
| Votes | % | Votes | % | |
| Michelle Wu (incumbent) | 66,859 | 71.85 | 78,977 | 93.24 |
| Josh Kraft | 21,481 | 23.08 | 1,128[a] | 1.33 |
| Domingos DaRosa | 2,428 | 2.61 | 114[b] | 0.13 |
| Robert Cappucci | 2,091 | 2.25 | 57[c] | 0.07 |
| Scattering | 201 | 0.22 | 4,426 | 5.22 |
| Total | 93,060 | 100 | TBD | TBD |
Notes
- votes cast in general election for Cappuci were write-in votes, as he was not included on the general election ballot
Publications
Articles
- Open Up The Conversation' on 2024 Olympics, WGBH, January 16, 2015
- The Road to Fear-Free Biking in Boston, The Boston Globe, July 11, 2016
- Forget Fare Hikes – Make the T Free, The Boston Globe, January 31, 2019
- Don't Just Fix the Infrastructure, Let's Rethink Our Transit Policies, The Boston Globe, October 18, 2019 –co-authored with Ayanna Pressley and Stacy Thompson
- Freedom to Move Act Would Increase Mobility, Connect Communities, Assist Economic Recovery, MassLive, July 1, 2020 –co authored with Ayanna Pressley and Ed Markey
- Taking On Our Housing Crisis, Mission Hill Gazette, July 2, 2021
- My Thoughts on Boston Public School Meals, Charlestown Patriot-Bridge, September 21, 2023
- Massachusetts Should Ban Third-Party Electric Suppliers, The Boston Globe, September 29, 2024 –co-authored with Andrea Campbell
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STATE CONTACTS
State Representative: David Biele
Email: David.Biele@mahouse.gov Phone: 617-722-2080
Legislative Aide: Shayne Perkins Email: Shayne.Perkins@masenate.gov
State Senator: Nick Collins
Email: Nick.Collins@masenate.gov Phone: 617-722-2080
Chief of Staff: Haley Dillon Email: Haley.Dillon@masenate.gov Phone: 617-722-1150
CITY OF BOSTON CONTACTS
Mayor of Boston : Michelle Wu
Email : Mayor@boston.gov Phone : 617-635-4500
Chief of Staff: Tiffany Chu Email: Tiffany.Chu@boston.gov Phone: 617.233.6091
South Boston Neighborhood Liaison in the Mayor’s Office: Lydia Hamilton Polaski
Email: Lydia.Polaski@boston.gov Phone : 617-293-8328
City Council President: Ruthzee Louijeune
Email: Ruthzee.Louijeune@boston.gov Phone: 617-635-4376
STATE AND CITY CONTACTS
STATE CONTACTS
State Representative: David Biele
Email: David.Biele@mahouse.gov Phone: 617-722-2080
Legislative Aide: Shayne Perkins Email: Shayne.Perkins@masenate.gov
State Senator: Nick Collins
Email: Nick.Collins@masenate.gov Phone: 617-722-2080
Chief of Staff: Haley Dillon Email: Haley.Dillon@masenate.gov Phone: 617-722-1150
CITY OF BOSTON CONTACTS
Mayor of Boston : Michelle Wu
Email : Mayor@boston.gov Phone : 617-635-4500
Chief of Staff: Tiffany Chu Email: Tiffany.Chu@boston.gov Phone: 617.233.6091
South Boston Neighborhood Liaison in the Mayor’s Office: Lydia Hamilton Polaski
Email: Lydia.Polaski@boston.gov Phone : 617-293-8328
City Council President: Ruthzee Louijeune
Email: Ruthzee.Louijeune@boston.gov Phone: 617-635-4376
White House shifts explanation on Tom Homan, U.S. border czar accused of taking $50,000 in a paper bag
House Democrats demand FBI release investigate materials to them, including any potential recordings
The White House is standing behind U.S. border czar Tom Homan following reports he had accepted $50,000 US from undercover agents posing as businesspeople during an FBI operation last year, with the press secretary offering a more specific denial than the Trump administration initially provided.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized Homan's encounter with the undercover agents as an effort by president Joe Biden's administration to "entrap one of the president's top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well would be taking a government position."
"The White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100 per cent because he did absolutely nothing wrong, and he is a brave public servant who has done a phenomenal job in helping the president shut down the border," she said.
The Trump administration Justice Department, which shut down the probe, said the matter was "subjected to a full review," but authorities found "no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing."
"The Department's resources must remain focused on real threats to the American people, not baseless investigations," FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. "As a result, the investigation has been closed."
Leavitt insisted to reporters during a briefing on Monday that Homan "never took the $50,000 you're referring to," though she did not elaborate on what she meant. An MSNBC spokesperson said the network stood by its reporting.
On Sunday, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Homan accepted the cash.
Former ICE director Tom Homan named Donald Trump’s ‘border czar’On Monday night, Fox News host Laura Ingraham offered him a chance to respond to reports that "said you took $50,000 cash in a bag from an undercover FBI agent."
"I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal," Homan said in response.
"You're talking about a guy who spent 34 years enforcing the law. I mean, I left a very successful business that I ran to come back and work for government again," said Homan, who added he and his family have been subjected to death threats.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Homan "has not been involved with any contract award decisions."
Without providing evidence, the White House criticized the Biden administration investigation as politically motivated. But the FBI director during Biden's term was Christopher Wray, a registered Republican, and the Justice Department investigated Democrats for corruption, including veteran Sen. Bob Menendez, who is now in prison.
'Two standards of justice'
Homan has been a key figure behind Trump's hardline immigration policies and deportation efforts, serving as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first Trump administration. Shortly after Trump's presidential victory in November, he announced that Homan would serve as "border czar" in the incoming administration.
Democrats from the House's judiciary committee in a letter on Tuesday called upon Patel to release "explosive recordings" and other documents from the aborted investigation.
"Confirmed by six sources and reportedly captured on recordings now in [Department of Justice] and FBI's possession, this startling episode is powerful evidence that Mr. Homan may have committed multiple federal felonies, including conspiracy to commit bribery."
Between his stints in both Trump administrations, Homan was a consultant for GEO Group, which invests in private prisons and has been awarded several new contracts this year from the federal government.
"The corruption investigation the Trump Administration blocked would have examined whether Mr. Homan was selling these contracts for personal profit before he even had the power to award them," the Democrats wrote.
The MSNBC report has raised fresh concerns about political interference in Justice Department matters at a time when Trump's calls for prosecutions of his adversaries is testing the law enforcement agency's long tradition of independence when it comes to prosecutorial decision-making.
Trump escalated his pressure campaign on the Justice Department over the weekend, publicly calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi to move forward with cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff. Separately, Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton had his residence and office searched this summer, though the specifics of that probe have not been officially announced.
"See what happened to Tom Homan, his border czar, who literally accepted a bag of cash — $50,000 — and the investigation was dropped once Trump became president," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said on ABC News. "There are just two standards of justice now in this country. If you are a friend of the president, a loyalist of the president, you can get away with nearly anything ... but if you are an opponent of the president, you may find yourself in jail."
Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, whose monthslong mortgage fraud investigation into Letitia James had not resulted in criminal charges, resigned Friday under pressure from the Trump administration. Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who previously served as a lawyer for Trump when he was a private citizen, has been tapped to succeed Siebert.
Siebert is among a number of Justice Department and FBI officials pushed out this year by the administration, with several subsequently filing lawsuits, alleging unfair dismissal.
With files from CBC News and Reuters
Trump's border czar says Canadian border is an 'extreme' vulnerability
Irregular crossings into the U.S. rising, creating friction
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's border czar says there is an "extreme national security vulnerability" along the Canada-U.S. border that he plans to deal with the moment the new Republican administration takes power.
Tom Homan, named Sunday as the official in charge of all U.S. border issues, said in a television interview that he expects there will be "tough conversations" with Ottawa about the situation along the Canada-U.S. border.
"The problem with the northern border is a huge national security issue," Homan told 7News in Watertown, N.Y., a community some 40 kilometres from a crossing into eastern Ontario. Homan is from the area.
He said "special interest aliens" — individuals from countries the U.S. says sponsor terror — use Canada as a gateway into the U.S.
"Because they know, [there's] a lot less, fewer officers here," Homan said. "It's one of the things I'll tackle when I'm in the White House."
In raw numbers, irregular crossings along the U.S. border with Mexico substantially outpace those over the Canadian border. However, human smuggling activity from Canada has risen sharply over the past two years, particularly along the border between eastern Ontario, Quebec, New York and Vermont.
U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents apprehended over 19,000 individuals, from 97 different countries, through this area over a 12-month span ending Oct. 2, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics.
That's more than were apprehended throughout the same area over the previous 17 fiscal years combined, according to a recent post on X by the USBP's Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia, who is in charge of the region, which is known as the Swanton Sector.
This has created friction with U.S. officials along border areas and their concerns were picked up by Trump during the election campaign and by his former Republican challengers Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy during the primary race.
Knows the region
Homan comes from West Carthage, N.Y., which sits about 70 kilometres southeast of Ontario's Thousand Islands region on the St. Lawrence River.
"It's home, I'm not going to ignore home," he told 7News.
Homan, a former acting director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he will be working in the White House and reporting directly to Trump while overseeing the new administration's plans for border crackdowns and mass deportations.
Trump, Homan said, must work with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to see that Canada's immigration laws are enforced.
A U.S. Border Patrol official looks from a hilltop on the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Ariz., on June 25. (Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press)
"There has to be an understanding from Canada that they can't be a gateway to terrorists coming into the United States," he said.
Gabriel Brunet, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, said in an emailed statement that the two countries have a "shared interest in deepening collaboration on cross-border issues." The statement said Canadian law enforcement agencies "are working day in and day out, with their U.S. counterparts" to maintain the integrity of the border.
LeBlanc "looks forward to building a constructive and positive relationship with whomever President Trump selects as his or her Secretary of Homeland Security," said the statement. Trump said Tuesday his nominee for that job is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
U.S. pressure over irregular border crossings played a role in Canada's decision this past winter to reimpose some visa requirements on Mexican nationals entering the country. At the time, Mexican nationals were one of the biggest drivers behind the rising numbers of irregular crossings into New York state and Vermont.
U.S. data now places India as the top source country for irregular crossings from Canada.
‘We control our borders’: Freeland responds to questions about border security in wake of U.S. electionTom Kmiec, the Conservative party's critic on the immigration, refugee and citizenship file, says the Liberals made an "error" in 2016 when they removed visa requirements from Mexican nationals and then "slow walked" the reversal. The previous Conservative government of Stephen Harper initially put the visa requirements in place.
Kmiec also referred to the recent cases involving an Egyptian-born father and son duo and a Pakistani student arrested in Canada for allegedly planning separate ISIS-linked attacks in Toronto and New York City. The student was allegedly planning to enter the U.S. with the help of human smugglers.
"On border security and visa integrity, the Liberals just aren't worth the cost," Kmiec said in a statement.
A deadly business
Human smuggling in Canada is a lucrative business, with some organized crime groups charging between $1,500 to $6,000 US per person for trips that often begin in Toronto or Montreal, then head through borderland areas of rivers, farmlands and forests.
Some journeys turn fatal. This past December, Ana Karen Vasquez-Flores, a 33-year-old pregnant Mexican woman, was found dead near Champlain, N.Y., after crossing from Canada.
The RCMP announced in June it had taken down an international smuggling ring allegedly connected to the St. Lawrence River drowning deaths of two families — one from India and the other from Romania — in March 2023. Both families were being smuggled into the U.S.
Canada could need 3,000 more border guards under Trump, union saysABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Homan and the Case of the Missing Fifty Thousand
Donald Trump’s second term is straining the national capacity for outrage. There is only so much bandwidth to process the scandal—or scandals—of the day. Worry over using the military to kill alleged drug traffickers without legal authority gives way to worry over using the military to quell domestic protests. The vindictive indictment of the former F.B.I. director James Comey is followed by the vindictive indictment of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. The President and his allies bully their way through episodes that would engulf an ordinary Administration, one with a capacity for shame and a lower pain threshold for bruising headlines. Soon enough, they figure, the controversy will burn itself out and the media caravan will move on.
So it is with the border czar, Tom Homan, and the case of the missing fifty thousand dollars. Homan, who had been the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, was widely expected to join him in a second. In September, 2024, F.B.I. agents, posing as businessmen, sought his help securing government contracts in the event of Trump’s reëlection. Homan reportedly accepted the money from them, stuffed into a takeout bag from the restaurant chain Cava. According to numerous news outlets, there is an audio recording of the transaction. The investigation was dropped once Trump took office, for reasons that remain murky. Did the President’s enablers in the Justice Department kill a criminal case against one of his top advisers? Or did weaknesses in the evidence, combined with the Supreme Court’s recent hostility toward public corruption cases, compel prosecutors to stand down? Meanwhile, another basic question remains unanswered: Where’s the fifty thousand?
The ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos raised this issue with Vice-President J. D. Vance on October 12th—and kept at it, no easy feat given the time constraints of live television. Vance’s performance embodied the Administration’s approach to unwelcome subjects: aggrieved hostility, intentional misdirection, and relentless incuriosity. “Did he keep that money or give it back?” Stephanopoulos asked Vance—by my count, the first of five times. “Tom Homan did not take a bribe. It’s a ridiculous smear,” Vance said. “And the reason you guys are going after Tom Homan so aggressively is because he’s doing the job of enforcing the law.” Vance complained that Stephanopoulos had “covered this story ad nauseam.” He continued, “I think that it would be a much more interesting story about why is it that Tom Homan, who is simply enforcing America’s immigration laws, is constantly harassed and threatened to the point of death threats.”
Stephanopoulos persisted: “Are you saying that he did not accept the fifty thousand dollars?” Vance responded, “I’m sure that in the course of Tom Homan’s life he has been paid more than fifty thousand dollars for services. The question is: Did he do something illegal? And there’s absolutely no evidence that Tom Homan has ever taken a bribe or done anything illegal.” But the question, as Stephanopoulos kept insisting, was not about whether this rose to the level of criminality. It was about whether Homan took the money. According to reporting by MSNBC and others, the F.B.I. had been tipped off in an unconnected investigation that Homan might be willing to steer contracts to the supposed businessmen in exchange for a million dollars. He appears to have taken a down payment stuffed into a Cava bag. This is not, Vance’s studied ignorance notwithstanding, a normal way of doing business. “Accepting fifty thousand dollars for doing what, George? I’m not even sure I understand the question. Is it illegal to take a payment for doing services?” Vance huffed. “Nobody has accused Tom of violating a crime, even the far-left media like yourself. So I’m actually not sure what the precise question is. Did he accept fifty thousand dollars? Honestly, George, I don’t know the answer to that question. What I do know is that he didn’t violate a crime.”
The Vice-President, it must be noted, graduated from Yale Law School, where presumably he learned something about what it takes to “violate a crime”—and how behavior that does not rise to the level of criminality can nonetheless be suspicious and blameworthy. The incoming Trump Administration was reportedly alerted to the investigation. It must have realized that a story this odiferous had a high likelihood of being leaked, yet it gave Homan a prominent role. It is hard to imagine another Administration in the post-Watergate era making that judgment—even if officials didn’t find Homan’s actions morally repugnant, they would avoid him out of self-preservation. But for the Trump team, with its high tolerance for embarrassment and supreme confidence in its impunity, there isn’t much that is off the table. So the Administration can brazen its way through self-serving deals that would have made its predecessors blanch: the gift of a luxury jet from Qatar; the various ventures into cryptocurrency, including a gala dinner for the biggest investors in the $TRUMP meme coin. A bag of cash pales by comparison.
Trump's border czar says he is 'bringing hell' to Boston. See Michelle Wu's response
Melina Khan
- President Trump's border czar Tom Homan criticized Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox for the city's immigration policies.
- Boston Mayor Michelle Wu defended Cox and the city's policies in response.
- Homan and Wu have clashed before over Boston's status as a sanctuary city.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has responded after President Trump's border czar Tom Homan said over the weekend that he is "bringing hell" to the city.
While speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Homan criticized Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox over an interview about the city's policies on immigration issues.
“I read a story last night: the police commissioner of Boston, you said you’d double down on not helping the law enforcement office of ICE,” Homan said. “I’m coming to Boston and I’m bringing hell with me.”
On Sunday, Wu defended Cox, calling Homan's comments "pretty insulting."
What did Tom Homan say about 'bringing hell' to Boston?
Homan didn't specify which interview he was referencing when he said he's "bringing hell" to Boston.
However, in an interview with WCVB last week, Cox reiterated Boston's status as a sanctuary city; under the Trust Act, city law enforcement officials are prohibited from cooperating with ICE to carry out civil warrants.
“We don’t care about your immigration status. What we do care about is: Are you a victim of crime in our city, or are you a victimizer? We will hold you accountable for that, and that doesn't matter what your immigration status is," Cox said.
Homan criticized Cox's comments as political.
“You’re not a police commissioner, take that badge off your chest and put it in the desk drawer, because you became a politician. You forgot what it’s like to be a cop," he said.
Michelle Wu says Tom Homan's comments are 'pretty clueless'
Wu defended Cox against the comments during a Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration Sunday in Boston.
"It’s pretty clueless for someone to be insulting our police commissioner," Wu told reporters. "We want to be sure to say Boston is welcoming and safe for everyone."
She also called Homan's statements "insulting," adding, "we have the best police commissioner in the country."
On Saturday, she also wrote in a post on Bluesky Social that Cox "has my complete confidence & support."
"This is our city. We’re going to continue following & enforcing the laws to keep all Bostonians safe," she wrote.
Wu and Homan have clashed before on immigration
This is not the first time Wu and Homan have clashed over immigration issues.
In November 2024, Wu told WCVB that city officials planned to "protect our residents" against federal deportation plans, which she said "actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear and having large scale economic impact."
In turn, Homan criticized Wu and Gov. Maura Healey's comments in an interview with Newsmax.
"They don't have to help us, but they need to get the hell out of the way, because we're coming, we're going to do it, which means if I gotta send twice as many resources to that sanctuary city, twice as many agents, that's exactly what I'm going to do," Homan said.
Melina Khan is a trending reporter for the USA TODAY Network - New England, which serves more than a dozen affiliated publications across New England. She can be reached at MKhan@gannett.com.
Boston police Commissioner Michael Cox goes 'On The Record' about immigration laws and DEI
Commissioner Michael Cox, a Boston native, has been the leader of the Boston Police Department (BPD) since he was appointed by Mayor Michelle Wu in 2022.
During his tenure, Cox has faced several issues, including differences with President Donald Trump on how to handle immigration enforcement, diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) within the BPD, keeping crime rates low and Boston safe, as well as strategies on recruiting new officers in the BPD.
BPD officers are forbidden by state and local law from carrying out immigration enforcement. In recent weeks, ICE authorities have been seen taking people into custody.
Cox was asked if there is any conflict between local police officers and ICE agents when it comes to the subject of immigration.
“The Boston Police Department has pretty defined rules, and we abide by the law here in the state, and we don’t enforce civil detainers regarding federal immigration law,” Cox said.
Cox was also asked how he navigates the difference between the city of Boston, state of Massachusetts and the U.S. federal government when it comes to the law.
“Our department abides by Boston law and Massachusetts law. We don’t have the authority to enforce federal immigration law,” Cox said.
“So from our perspective, what we tell anyone who comes to visit our city or lives in our city is that we don’t care about your immigration status. What we do care about, is are you a victim of crime in our city, or are you a victimizer.” We still hold you accountable for that, no matter what your immigration status is.”
Cox was asked what he would say to someone who does not support the Massachusetts immigration law or the TRUST Act.
“What people don’t understand is there is a difference between criminal warrants and civil detainers,” Cox said. “Any criminal warrant is someone wanted outside the state, and if there is a warrant involved, we will absolutely enforce it, including federal ones, if there is a warrant involved, because we’re almost mandated to. But civil detainers are the defining line, that we just don’t do that because it's immigration-related.”
Cox was asked if he was worried about potential federal funding cuts and how big of an impact federal funding plays in the BPD.
“Boston is one of the safest major cities in the country because of the partnership we have with the public, the partnership we have with other law enforcement people here in the city, and quite honestly, the partnerships we have with the federal government and all our federal partners. We could not be as safe as we are without the help of the federal government. They are partners with us, so I don’t know why that would be undone. But when it comes to financing and income flows into our city, I can only control what we can control, whether it’s the city council, through a budget process every year, or however, the way people talk about funding the police department.”
Since Trump’s inauguration, he has taken aggressive steps to end DEI funding across government. The BPD under Cox has been built on community policing. Cox was asked how important it is for Cox to have officers that reflect the community they are policing.
“I think it is tremendously important,” Cox said. “Boston is a very diverse city, from all walks, all religions, all parts of life, so we want our department to reflect that because we deal with all parts of our city.”
However, Trump has said he wants to emphasize merit-based hiring over diversity equity and inclusion . Cox was asked what his thoughts were on that.
“Well, I would imagine that merit-based hiring is part of every process,” Cox said. “If someone doesn’t belong in our department, we remove them, but we have a pretty stringent application process to make sure we bring on the right people. It’s really important that our department reflects the city, and I think it shows up in how we do our job every single day. It has been shown over the years, certainly in business studies, that diverse groups, teams, tend to make better decisions, and actually, even in the private sector, they tend to do better. When you come from a different perspective, you’re informing someone who's making a decision about a blind spot that they otherwise wouldn’t know about, which makes for better decision-making.”
Cox was asked how he handles people who have fears of crime.
“That is why it is important to be on this show today, to remind folks that we are here to serve the public, we need people to come forward and communicate with us. Community policing is about building trust. We worry that there will be less people communicating with us of people are afraid to come forward, that’s why we say your immigration status is not relevant when it comes to public safety. People fly here from all parts of the world to visit or vacation or whatever. The fact is, if they are the victim of a crime, we want them to come tell us.”
Homicides in Boston have been at the lowest rate since 1957, but there has been a spike in other crimes, such as shoplifting. Cox was asked what is behind that and why.
“One of the good things about being able to drive down violent crime in the city is that you are able to address other areas of crime,” Cox said. “Now we can actually prioritize and partner with the business community. I don’t know any city in America, [where] if violent crime is very high and there is zero shoplifting or anything else going on, that they are going to not talk about violent crime. It is very important that we work to keep violent crime down. Through communicating with local businesses, we have been working on strategies to find some common themes to see who is doing this stuff [shoplifting] and there is organized crime behind this sometimes as well, and to make a dent in it.”
“We have a new initiative called our ‘community interaction teams,’ which are just officers who are walking in areas where we get public feedback from the public about crime or the fear of crime, and then we address it.”
Would Mass. law enforcement help with Trump deportations? It depends who you ask
An ICE agent badge on Sept. 25, 2019, in Revere, Massachusetts. (Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via GettyImages)Massachusetts politicians and criminal justice officials say they expect the incoming Trump administration will make good on its promises to pursue mass deportations — but exactly how remains unclear.
As state, county and city law enforcement leaders evaluate their legal options to refuse assistance — or offer it — to federal agents, competing tactics could emerge. And immigration advocates warn different policies among government agencies will breed confusion.
In a TruthSocial post Monday, President-elect Donald Trump appeared to confirm he plans to declare a national emergency and use "military assets" to deport people in the U.S. without authorization.
Earlier this month, Gov. Maura Healey said state police will not assist in any mass deportation efforts. She told MSNBC the state has several options to protect immigrants' rights, including litigation and executive orders. Studies estimate more than 150,000 people living in Massachusetts lack legal status.
"Every tool in the toolbox," the Democrat said, "is going to be used to protect our residents and protect our state — and certainly to hold the line to protect democracy as a basic principle, right?"
But other law enforcement agencies in the state could participate in deportations.
Republican and former Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, a hardliner on immigration who led the Trump reelection campaign in Massachusetts, expects federal agents will lead any of those efforts in the state.
"When it comes to illegal aliens coming into our communities," Hodgson said, "they're going to — whether or not the governor or local officials want to or not — they're going to make sure that they'll do everything they can to keep everyone safe."
Some officials say that because it appears Trump's mass deportation plans will focus on people with criminal records, those already involved with the court system or incarcerated will likely be the first affected.
This could present a challenge for federal officials. Each of the 14 sheriffs in Massachusetts sets their own policies, according to Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux, Hodgson's Democratic successor.
"The federal government has no authority to tell a sheriff what to do," Heroux said. "In fact, the governor has no authority to tell a sheriff what to do, because we're all independently elected."
Sheriffs cannot violate constitutional rights or state laws, but legal experts note they maintain primary oversight of jails and their short-term inmates. The state attorney general's office does not oversee the facilities and cannot control whether the jails enter contracts with ICE.
Heroux, who on Monday morning announced an ICE detainee unit at his jail has been converted into a training academy and office space, said fewer than 10% of people in his custody lack legal immigration status.
Citing the U.S. Constitution, he said sheriffs cannot be required to help federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detain people.
"I'll cooperate with the federal government," Heroux said. "I'll give them the information they need, but I'm not here to do their job."
Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis, a Republican, said he holds a different perspective.
He's worked closely with ICE since he was elected in 2011 and said this year, there's been a spike in the number of people ICE is seeking to hold at his jail compared to the roughly few dozen inmates with ICE detainers three years ago.
Evangelidis added he's frustrated by a 2017 state Supreme Judicial Court ruling that said jails cannot hold someone solely based on immigration status, if that person would otherwise be released or post bail.
"I have no ability to hold that person beyond the processing time," Evangelidis said. "Even if ICE is on its way and says, 'We'll be there in 40 minutes, hold them,' I can't."
Evangelidis pointed to a case this summer of a man charged with attempted murder, kidnapping and stalking. The court released the man on $2,500 bail despite an immigration detainer against him. Federal immigration officials eventually arrested the man about a month later.
Evangelidis has asked policy-makers to give sheriffs more leeway to work with ICE.
"It would be appropriate to give, for example, myself as sheriff a 12- or 24-hour window to notify ICE and detain people beyond that for that purpose only," Evangelidis said.
The only facility in the state with a federal contract to hold ICE detainees is the Plymouth County House of Correction. Plymouth Sheriff Joseph McDonald, also a Republican, has faced criticism for conditions at the jail. He said he did not want to speculate on what might change under a new president.
Heroux said federal dollars may be one thing that puts sheriffs on the same page.
"That's probably the easiest, the most direct way that the federal government could impact Massachusetts is withholding those federal funds by tying their agenda to the federal funds," Heroux said.
As for local police, who are under the jurisdiction of mayors, some city leaders say their officers will not ask about immigration status.
Mayor Michelle Wu recently reaffirmed Boston is a so-called sanctuary city; under a city ordinance, police can only aid ICE in major criminal investigations.
It is one of at least two-dozen Massachusetts communities immigration advocates say have passed similar protections. In 2017, many of these municipalities were targeted in federal immigration raids during Trump's first term.
Wu, a Democrat, told Channel 5 cities cannot override the federal government, but they can provide some city services to all residents.
“What we can do is make sure that we are doing our part to protect our residents in every possible way, that we are not cooperating with those efforts that actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear and having large-scale economic impact,” Wu said.
But even if city leaders do not cooperate, the incoming administration can utilize the federal court system in its deportation plans. Trump is likely to name a new Massachusetts U.S. Attorney to replace Josh Levy, the acting head of the office, in January — a move that's customary whenever a new president takes office.
Former U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, anticipates the office will take on more immigration cases than usual to help send a message.
"It will serve as a deterrent to let people know that we are going to prosecute federally anyone who gets convicted of a crime and is still in this country," Ortiz said.
Ortiz also expects that resources will be an issue and Washington will have to prioritize how deportations will be carried out.
"You may want to process a significant number, but logistically and practically, you will be limited in what you can do," Ortiz said.
Ortiz pointed out another potential division between the state and the feds. While the state and some municipalities have promised to protect immigrants, the U.S. attorney's office is responsible for defending the White House in litigation over its policies.
Most leaders agreed on this: Because of its reputation as friendly to immigrants, Massachusetts will likely be a target of federal immigration actions.
This segment aired on November 19, 2024.
Deborah Becker
Host/Reporter
debbmc@bu.eduDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education.
Deb is also a substitute host on several WBUR programs and helps produce and report for various WBUR special projects. Deb also worked on the launch of WRNI, Rhode Island's NPR News Station, where she served as Morning Edition host and host of the weekly show "Focus Rhode Island."
Before coming to WBUR, Deb worked at Monitor Radio, the broadcast arm of The Christian Science Monitor newspaper. She also worked at several Boston area radio stations. Deb has received numerous awards for her hosting, newscasts, reporting and investigative reporting from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTNDA), Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, National Education Writers Association, Associated Press, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Alliance on Mental Illness, Parent/Professional Advocacy League and United Press International. She has also completed several fellowships on addiction, mental health, juvenile justice and journalism and the law.
Deb studied journalism at St. Bonaventure University. She lives with her family in central Massachusetts.
Trump's border czar threatens he's 'bringing hell' to Boston
President Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, issued a threat to Boston's police commissioner Saturday and said he was "bringing hell" to the city for allegedly not cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington D.C., Homan claimed he'd read a story in which Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox "doubled down on not helping the law enforcement office of ICE." Homan then said, "I'm coming to Boston. I'm bringing hell with me," to loud applause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSGesTthRqE
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in a social media post she stands behind Cox. "This is our city. We’re going to continue following & enforcing the laws to keep all Bostonians safe. And it goes without saying that our police commissioner has my complete confidence & support," she said.
The Boston Police Department had no immediate comment.
Homan appeared to be referring to statements by Cox in recent days explaining the role of Boston police under state law: "We abide by the law here in the state, and we don't enforce civil detainers regarding federal immigration law," he told WCVB.
The law in Boston and in Massachusetts bars law enforcement from proactively turning people over to federal authorities for immigration violations. In criminal matters, local law enforcement cooperates when ICE asks to detain people.
Wu is slated to appear next month before a congressional committee that says it's investigating so-called sanctuary cities. Homan has lashed out at Wu in the past over immigration policy.
Beth Healy
Deputy Managing Editor
bhealy1@bu.eduBeth Healy is deputy managing editor at WBUR, overseeing a team of local news reporters. She joined WBUR in 2019 as a member of the station’s startup investigative team. She co-wrote the team's first series, "Dying on the Sheriff's Watch," which examined deaths from poor health care at county jails and won a national Edward R. Murrow award.
Other investigations have shed light on employees required to fight for workers’ compensation amid the pandemic; state officials neglecting oversight of the troubled MBTA; and predatory investors in affordable housing.
Prior to WBUR, Healy worked at the Boston Globe, where she was twice a member of the award-winning Spotlight Team. She was part of the investigative series and podcast, “Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.” and was on the team that wrote Debtors’ Hell, a Pulitzer finalist.
While at the Globe, she covered the financial beat for nearly a decade. She investigated the transit system pension fund, losses at the Harvard endowment and the abuse of immigrant domestic workers, among other stories.
Boston clergy describe immigrant fears ahead of Wu's testimony in D.C.
Boston-area clergy members representing multiple religions this week told Mayor Michelle Wu their congregants are avoiding services amid fears of immigration arrests.
“Throughout the Boston Archdiocese, people are not coming to church — and the fear is real,” said Bishop Mark O’Connell, second in command at the archdiocese.
O'Connell said congregants are worried that federal agents will enter churches and schools or separate families.
The church has heard no actual reports of this happening so far, O'Connell said, "but to react to the fear, I think we have to comfort our people.”
O’Connell spoke during a meeting convened Tuesday by Wu to hear from clergy ahead of her scheduled appearance before a GOP-led House oversight committee in Washington D.C. next week.
Republicans on the congressional panel are expected to grill Wu and fellow Democratic mayors from Chicago, Denver and New York City about so-called sanctuary policies, which limit the role of local police in immigration enforcement to criminal matters. Wu and other leaders argue it’s not Boston’s legal role to enforce federal immigration violations; local police do cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials seeking to detain people involved in serious crimes.
Ahead of the hearing, Wu is checking in with community stakeholders, including immigration advocates and religious leaders. "This has been part of how I've been thinking about getting ready for the chance to speak before Congress," Wu said after the meeting.
Among those who participated was Nicolas Homicil, bishop of Voice of the Gospel Tabernacle in Mattapan. He compared Wu to David taking on the Goliath of Congress. Homicil said he hopes the mayor can share with committee members the impact of the threat of immigration enforcement on congregants. He said religious figures have a role to play as well.
“What we have to do as faith leaders: to pray for [Congress members], for God to open their eyes,” Homicil said. " The poor need to be welcome. The hungry need to be fed. Those who have no place to live, we need to seek a place for them."
The assembled clergy this week said they’re seeing fear among their members — a sentiment being stoked daily by top Trump officials. Over the weekend, border czar Tom Homan threatened he’d be “bringing hell” to Boston in retaliation for the city’s position on assisting ICE.
Rev.
Arlene Hall of the Deliverance Temple Worship Center speaks at the
clergy meeting with Mayor Michelle Wu. (Seth Daniel/Dorchester Reporter)
Pastor Arlene Hall of Deliverance Temple Worship Center in Dorchester said leaders in Boston should instead “bring heaven” in response to Homan’s pledge. She said even people with legal status are afraid they could get swept up by immigration police.
“There are individuals who are citizens of this country that feel that they may be sent back to their country of origin,” Hall said. “And that's one of the realities that we hope that those in Washington will hear.”
Samuel Acevedo, a pastor at Congregation Lion of Judah in the South End, tried to strike a hopeful tone ahead of Wu's trip to the Capitol. He said he'd welcome Trump administration officials to visit Boston.
"Please don't fight Boston," Acevedo said. "Work with us. Dream with us, Mr. President ... Be the president who paved a path of citizenship."
Pew Research polling suggests six in 10 voters think those already living in the U.S. should be allowed to remain, even if they don't currently have legal status. But surveys also show religious people slant more toward Republican policies, while those who don’t identify as religious lean Democratic.
The religious leaders who met with the mayor appeared supportive of the city's welcoming message toward immigrants. But that feeling is far from universal among the faithful.
C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, a conservative lay group that’s been critical of the direction of the church, was not at the meeting.
“ The hierarchy should also be aware that large numbers of Catholics are not invested in resistance to President Trump,” he said.
Doyle is calling for a “compassionate” approach to immigrants, but he said the nation's laws need to be respected.
“A growing number of Catholics are Hispanic in origin, and a growing number of them voted for Donald Trump,” he said. “So you're not finding among Hispanic Catholics an enthusiasm for resistance in the matter of immigration enforcement.”
That resonates with the Rev. Daniel Walker, a minister at New Bethel Baptist Church in Framingham. Walker supports Trump, and he said Boston could pay a price for not cooperating more with the White House.
“What do I think about what Mayor Wu's doing? She's grandstanding,” Walker said. “This is her shot. And it's not going to work out.”
Wu and the other mayors were asked in late January to testify before the Republican-led oversight committee. Wu agreed to attend after negotiating a slightly later date with the committee because she recently had a baby. The chair of the committee, U.S. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, called the upcoming hearing "an investigation into the policies of sanctuary jurisdictions," and included a number of unfounded claims in his announcement.
Walker, of Framingham, said he believes people in the country illegally should turn themselves in. Just this week, the White House announced an intent to create a new registry for people here without legal status, threatening misdemeanor prosecution and fines for those who don’t comply.
Walker said he's all for making the United States safer. But as a church leader, he also walks a fine line: He said he wouldn’t shut the church doors on someone seeking help.
“You've asked a church of God, a house of God for sanctuary, so I'm going to do everything I can to defend you, to protect you,” Walker said.
At least, he said, as long as the person at his door is not trying to evade law enforcement.
This article was originally published on February 26, 2025.
How ICE’s Arrest of a High School Student Activated a Massachusetts Town
“We’re trying to find ways the community can defend itself.”
Marcelo Gomes da Silva, center, is embraced by friends outside his home on June 5, 2025, after his release from ICE detention. Erin Clark/The Boston Globe/Getty
Marcelo Gomes da Silva is still trying to get back to his old life. The 18-year-old, who was born in Brazil, wants to enjoy the summer before his senior year at Milford High School in Massachusetts—go to pool parties, hang out with friends. Since his arrest by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he has been praised for his strength. “But that’s not really what I want,” he told Mother Jones on a video call. “I want everyone to think of me as Marcelo Gomes da Silva, just as I was before.”
On a Saturday morning in late May, ICE arrested Gomes da Silva on his way to volleyball practice. At first, when he noticed a white Ford Explorer trailing his car, he thought little of it. But when Gomes da Silva pulled into a friend’s driveway, an ICE agent walked up, knocked on the window, asked for his documents, and eventually handcuffed him. The officer asked Gomes da Silva if he knew the reason for his arrest. He said he did not. “Because you’re illegal,” the agent told him, “you’re an immigrant.”
Gomes da Silva had never thought of himself as undocumented. He came to the United States at age 7 as a visitor and later obtained a now-lapsed student visa. “I was just in shock,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on and I was kind of questioning God…Why is this happening to me? Did I do something? I never really understood why I was there.”
The Department of Homeland Security said ICE officers “never intended to apprehend” Gomes da Silva but were instead looking for his father, the owner of the car, whom they accused of having a “habit of reckless driving.” To the US government, Gomes da Silva was an accidental target in the wrong place at the wrong time. These so-called “collateral arrests”—often warrantless apprehensions of immigrants without a criminal history—have become more commonplace as the Trump administration pushes the legal limits of its deportation dragnet.
“I didn’t say he was dangerous,” acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said of Gomes da Silva at a press conference days after his detention. “I said he’s in the country illegally and we’re not going to walk away from anybody.” Gomes da Silva was taken to ICE’s Boston field office in Burlington, where he was detained for six days until a judge released him on bond in early June.
The arrest of the Brazilian-native honors student has thrust Milford into the national spotlight, making it a flashpoint for President Donald Trump’s turbocharged immigration enforcement. It has also served as a catalyst for resistance in a town where dynamics around immigration have at times created fissures. “It definitely brought the community much closer together,” said Coleen Greco, the mother of one of Gomes da Silva’s volleyball teammates. “I hadn’t seen that kind of activation in the 22 years I’ve lived here. Nothing like it.”
Word of Gomes da Silva’s detention spread quickly through Milford, a 30,000-person blue-collar town 40 miles southwest of Boston. When he didn’t show up to volleyball practice that Saturday morning, his teammates and coaches assumed he must have overslept. Then coach Andrew Mainini got a text from a player, an undocumented 17-year-old who was in the car with Gomes da Silva. ICE had let him go along with an exchange student from Spain, but held onto Gomes da Silva. Mainini recalled feeling shocked and helpless. “We didn’t know what to do,” he said.
After practice, school administrators gathered everyone in the locker room and shared the news. There was a deep silence. Some players cried. One of them threw up. “I knew it was happening in Milford, but I didn’t really know anybody who was detained,” said Greco’s son Colin. “That’s when emotion just hit everybody and we were like, ‘This is real.’”
In the weeks leading up to the incident with Gomes da Silva, communities in Massachusetts were already on high alert. In May, ICE Boston launched what it described as an “enhanced immigration targeted operation.” The monthlong clampdown dubbed Operation Patriot led to almost 1,500 arrests across the state, where immigration arrests are up by more than 300 percent, according to a New York Times analysis.
Diego Low, director of the Metrowest Worker Center in Framingham, said Milford had been hit the hardest by immigration enforcement. In the 48 hours before Gomes da Silva’s arrest, he said ICE agents were “pounding on the back door” of Catholic Charities Worcester County to be let in during a food distribution drive. And on May 30, a Milford father of twins in the process of applying for a green card was detained and later transferred to Burlington.
Because the region is a hub for construction workers, Low said, there had also been a noticeable surge in vans being stopped by officers in the early mornings. “It had been relentless,” he said. “Those of us who are connected to the town’s immigrant community were reeling.”
“I think that many people really believed that we were going to be deporting criminals. They didn’t think an innocent high school student from their community would be targeted for this.”
Milford is an immigrant town; almost 30 percent of its population is foreign-born. Over the past 15 years, the predominantly Irish and Italian ancestry community has seen a steady growth in the number of Brazilian and Hispanic residents, according to the Boston Globe. At times, this demographic shift has given rise to tensions between newcomers and locals.
Low specifically recalled an incident in 2011 in which an undocumented migrant from Ecuador struck and killed a motorcyclist, Matthew Denice. The man was later convicted of several charges, including manslaughter, and sentenced to serve 12 to 14 years in prison. ICE deported him in 2023. The year after Denice’s death, Milford became the first New England town to sign on to an ICE program to crack down on the hiring of undocumented immigrants.
“It just created this wave of rechazo,” Low said of the anti-immigration backlash that erupted in the town, which has the second-largest Ecuadorian population in the state. “And to some extent, there’s still a faint reverberation of that to this day.” Denice’s mother, Maureen Maloney, was invited on stage during a 2016 Trump campaign event in Arizona. (She spoke out recently in support of more immigration enforcement.)
When Colin texted his mother to say ICE had taken Gomes da Silva, Greco could not believe it. She thought it must have been a typo. But then she jumped into action. Greco reached out to her sister, an immigration attorney, who alerted a longtime immigrant rights advocate in the governor’s office. She also began contacting local reporters and helped connect Gomes da Silva’s parents, who are undocumented, with a legal team and Low, a Portuguese speaker. “The dad was obviously grief-stricken,” she said, “and his English was getting worse and worse because he was just so emotional.”
On June 1, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, issued a statement demanding information about Gomes da Silva’s arrest. He was supposed to play in the band at the high school graduation that day. After the ceremony, students, still in robes, marched a mile to the town hall, where they staged a rally calling for his release. They were joined by about 200 teachers, according to the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and many other community members. Democratic US Rep. Jake Auchincloss attended the rally and called out the Trump administration on X, saying it “pardons cop-beaters from Jan 6 but detains high-school volleyball players.”
The mobilization immediately after Gomes da Silva’s arrest struck Low as a “pivotal moment” for Milford, where Trump won 42 percent of votes in 2024. “It’s really the first time I can remember that there’s been a significant portion of the community speaking up on behalf of the immigrants who live here,” Low said, noting that he hadn’t heard a public official in the town espouse such a pro-immigrant stance in all his years of organizing work. “I think that’s really important going forward.”
Since the large-scale ICE roundups, his organization has shifted its primary focus from cases like worker wage theft to locating and assisting the families of people who have been detained. That includes an emergency mutual aid fund to provide legal support and pay for bond and an ICE watch group that monitors the agency’s presence. “None of us were prepared for how to respond to this moment,” Low added, “and so we’re inventing it…We’re trying to find ways the community can defend itself.”
To keep the momentum going, residents are holding community meetings to discuss how to prepare for future situations. Mainini, the volleyball coach, attended one gathering of about 20 people, which included teachers from different school districts and faith leaders working with the Brazilian and Ecuadorian immigrant populations. He’s joined a subcommittee dedicated to family preparedness and getting documents ready for parents to assign guardianship of their US citizen children in the event of their detention or deportation. Other groups are tasked with food and resource allocation and volunteer outreach.
When asked why Gomes da Silva’s case hit a nerve in Milford, Mainini underscored how integrated he was in the town. “When we think of undocumented immigrants, we don’t think of Marcelo, this boy that we went to school with since kindergarten,” he said. Some neighbors may not have even realized Gomes da Silva didn’t have legal status until now. “I think that many people really believed that we were going to be deporting criminals. They didn’t think an innocent high school student from their community would be targeted for this.” Mainini added: “It was a perfect storm.”
While in ICE custody at Burlington, Gomes da Silva held on to this faith. He talked to other detainees about Jesus, and they prayed together before going to sleep on the concrete floor with the lights on and only a space blanket to cover themselves. In the facility, which is supposed to hold people only temporarily before they’re transferred to longer-term detention, he shared a single toilet with some 35 men. They weren’t allowed outdoors, Gomes da Silva said, so to pass the time, they sometimes played tic-tac-toe with water bottle caps on an improvised board someone scratched on the floor. “We never really got to know what was going on in the outside,” he said.
A day after his arrest, lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition seeking Gomes da Silva’s release. The document stated that Gomes da Silva has no criminal history. Not long after, a judge issued an order preventing ICE from transferring him out of state for at least 72 hours.
While Gomes da Silva waited, the local resistance continued. It was primarily led by the students, who walked out of class the Monday after the arrest wearing white T-shirts with the words “Free Marcelo.” An online fundraiser was set up to help the family. Neighbors began bringing them groceries. For several days, Greco’s house became a sort of command post as supporters flowed in and out to offer help and write affidavits attesting to Gomes da Silva’s standing in the community. “I don’t think he really understands how this all came together,” she said, “and just how fast…When I think about all the miracles I got to witness over those two weeks, it still blows my mind.”
On June 5, Immigration Judge Jenny Beverly in Chelmsford ruled that DHS had not proved that Gomes da Silva was a “danger to community” and set a $2,000 bond for his release. Outside the courthouse, friends and teammates celebrated the decision. Gomes da Silva was freed that day and, standing through a car’s sunroof, rode back home as his neighbors and relatives awaited waving signs. His father, in tears, apologized as he embraced him.
“He just kept bringing up that ‘I can’t believe my son was in handcuffs,’” Gomes da Silva said, “‘I can’t believe my son was in jail.’”
Gomes da Silva’s lawyers have since filed an asylum application on his behalf. While it’s unlikely that he could be redetained, he’s still vulnerable. “It’s still precarious in the sense that nothing is guaranteed,” said Robin Nice, a Boston-based immigration lawyer who started representing Gomes da Silva after learning about his case through a loose network of attorneys active on Facebook and Signal groups. “And the court process is probably going to take at least two years…He is in this kind of limbo status.”
Meanwhile, Gomes da Silva hopes to pay forward the support he received by helping other immigrants, especially those lingering in detention. This experience, he said, proved that “the love that you show to others will always come back.”
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Todd Wallack
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Todd Wallack
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Todd Wallack was a correspondent on WBUR's investigative team.
He was previously the deputy managing editor in WBUR's newsroom, starting in March 2021. As part of that role, he oversees a team of reporters who cover politics, criminal justice, and general news.
Previously, Wallack spent 14 years as a reporter at the Boston Globe, including eight as an investigative and data reporter on the Globe's Spotlight Team. Wallack has also worked at several other newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Herald, and the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News.
While at the Globe, Wallack worked on five projects that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, including ones exploring Boston's legacy of racism, the troubled Massachusetts mental health system, a deadly national outbreak meningitis traced to a Massachusetts pharmacy, and unsafe housing for Boston college students. He was also a member of the larger staff that covered the Boston Marathon bombings, which won the 2014 Pulitzer for breaking news. Wallack has also won national awards for his work on public records from the Scripps Howard Foundation and the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation and received other awards from the Education Writers Association and the Association of Health Care Journalists. He has also been a judge and a finalist for the Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize.
Wallack graduated from Hingham High School and studied journalism at Northwestern University. He was a Nieman-Berkman Klein fellow at Harvard University in 2019-2020.
He now lives with his wife in Somerville
ICE agents are staking out local courthouses. As they've roamed the halls, Mass. court arrests tripled
East Boston District Court. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)Courthouse arrests in Massachusetts have surged nearly three-fold over Trump’s first nine months in office, according to ICE data compiled by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.
A WBUR analysis of the data found 386 arrests at 46 courts across the state — including 147 at the federal courthouse in Boston — from January through mid-October. That’s up from 131 over the same period last year under the Biden administration.
And the latest data is almost certainly an undercount. In East Boston, for instance, ICE recorded only six courthouse arrests, while lawyers and immigration advocates report having seen far more.
Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said ICE activity has impacted hundreds of cases prosecuted by his office — noting instances in which defendants got detained during proceedings, as well as times when victims and witnesses were afraid to cooperate because of agents' presence.
“The ultimate concern is that it has a chilling effect on our ability to deliver public safety for victims and witnesses of crime,” Hayden said.
He acknowledged ICE has legal authority to operate in courts here, but, "Do I wish they would stay out of our courthouses?" he said. "Absolutely.”
"Do I wish they would stay out of our courthouses? ... Absolutely.”
Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden
Assistance for ICE in East Boston
With immigration enforcement mounting, the Massachusetts Trial Court released a policy in May on how court staff are to interact with ICE. Court officers must provide public information to agents when asked — as that information is available to the public — but they can’t initiate communication with ICE.
According to the court rules, agents can enter court lockups to take people into custody, but court staff cannot assist in, nor impede ICE arrests. That was put to the test on the afternoon of Nov. 21 in East Boston — in an alley behind the district court — after Alejandro Orrego Agudelo’s arraignment.
Video taken by an immigration advocate in East Boston and shared with WBUR showed Orrego on the ground — shirtless, barefoot and shackled. Orrego cried out for help as two agents in black hoodies and blue jeans struggled to control him.
A crowd began to form, and a court officer in a white shirt and court badge helped the agents subdue the 27-year-old. At one point, the officer helped shove him into the back of a black SUV.
A woman in the crowd shouted: “Where are you taking him? He was released in court.”
One of the agents responded: “He needs to go to immigration court.”
Sandy Wright, a volunteer with the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts, was off camera, challenging the second court officer: “Who do you work for? Are you Trial Court? I thought you’re not supposed to be cooperating with ICE.”
In the video, a second court officer stood before the crowd with her hand up, signaling the crowd to stop, and made a phone call: “This is East Boston district court, we need assistance from Boston Police Department. We have ICE here collecting somebody and we have a large crowd.”
Nine Boston police officers arrived on the scene that day. The police report said Orrego was “violently resisting the agent.” The video showed him struggling, with his hands and feet cuffed.
Orrego was in court facing charges that included assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest, as well as malicious destruction of property and disturbing the peace. He’d been arrested that morning after a neighbor called police to report an altercation with him. A communication with court officials shared with WBUR says ICE had a “detainer” to take him into custody.
But the incident represented a violation of the Massachusetts Trial Court's policy not to help in an ICE arrest, according to Trial Court spokeswoman Jennifer Donahue.
She said in a statement, “Measures are being taken to address this violation.”
Donahue said the East Boston incident prompted the Court’s security leadership to meet with court officers across the state to reinforce its policy to neither help nor impede ICE arrests. She would not say if anyone has been disciplined for the violation.
The Executive Office of the Trial Court declined requests to interview Chief Justice of the Trial Court Heidi Brieger, who oversees all departments, and Trial Court Administrator Thomas Ambrosino.
East Boston District Courthouse. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
Some scoff at measures that limit collaboration between court staff and ICE.
Retired ICE agent Albert Orlowski worked in immigration enforcement for more than two decades. He questioned how court officers could stand by while federal agents struggle to apprehend someone who’s resisting.
“Law enforcement agencies should cooperate with each other,” Orlowski said. “Assisting another officer — that's called professional courtesy.”
The rationale for courthouse arrests is clear, Orlowski explained: It’s an obvious place to find people facing criminal charges, and it's safer than most locations, as suspects typically have had to pass through metal detectors.
“It's so much easier to arrest somebody from a courthouse — when they're in a controlled environment — than it is to arrest somebody out on the street,” Orlowski said.
Spokespeople for Boston-area ICE and the Department of Homeland Security in Washington D.C. did not respond to requests for comment.
Evading ICE at courthouses
In a separate incident at East Boston District Court in late November, an 18-year-old high school student appeared for a summons. WBUR is referring to him by his middle name, Josué, as he fears retaliation by ICE.
Josué said the judge first heard the cases of non-Latinos, then called matters involving Latinos, all of whom spoke Spanish and required an interpreter. That’s when ICE agents showed up.
Local advocates outside the courthouse that day said ICE arrested at least two people during the proceedings. Josué said as he waited for his case to be called, he could hear the commotion and it was clear people were being grabbed as they left the court. He said he was afraid the agents would arrest him.
“For sure,” he said in Spanish. “But thank God, no.”
Josué said he’s undocumented and has been in the U.S. since he was 15.
When he walked out of the courthouse, Josué said the agents were distracted detaining someone else, and he managed to get into a car waiting around the block. Now he’s trying to keep his head down — he wants to finish high school, and not think too much about getting sent back to Honduras.
“God willing, that won’t happen,” he said.
ICE reported the highest number of Massachusetts district court arrests in Lynn, Woburn, Framingham and Waltham. At the Waltham District Court, west of Boston, an auto repair shop has a front row seat on the action.
Manuel Arias owns the shop across from the courthouse. He recounted seeing at least a dozen ICE arrests over the last few months as people left in cars or on foot. Arias said his staff filmed a number of the arrests, but they’ve become so commonplace that the mechanics stopped taking video.
“The way people have been grabbed has been savage,” Arias said in Spanish. Often, multiple agents grabbed a single person, he said.
In one case, a man bolted from the courthouse, he recalled, then ran across a busy intersection and got away.
Video from Arias, reviewed by WBUR, showed an agent giving chase, then giving up after the man jumps over a guardrail.
Calls for more restrictions on ICE activity in courthouses
In front of the Waltham courthouse steps, there are signs taped to lampposts: “ICE took our neighbor from this spot.”
“Unfortunately our courthouse has become an ICE trap,” said Jonathan Paz, founder of a group called Fuerza Community Defense Network, which monitors ICE activity in the city.
The group’s volunteers have witnessed dozens of ICE arrests in Waltham, Paz said. And in his view, the court system is bolstering the work of agents.
“Why [are] our taxpayer dollars, here in Massachusetts, being used to facilitate and better carry out these arrests in our courthouse?” Paz said.
"It's remarkable to see just how complicit this whole system is.”
A
poster from the Fuerza Community Defense Network on a telephone outside
of Waltham District Court warning people of the potential presence of
ICE at the courthouse. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
This week, the 32-year-old Waltham resident announced he’s running for Congress. He’s among those calling on the state to put more limits on ICE activity at courthouses.
Paz said he’s waiting for the Trial Court — or the Legislature, or the governor or the attorney general — to keep ICE from interfering with people’s legal proceedings. They can’t stop agents from being on court property, but they can take steps to help people have their day in court without fear of being arrested.
ICE’s policy on courthouse arrests dictates that agents must observe local laws. Some states require agents to present judicial warrants; Massachusetts requires only a form known as a detainer, signed by an ICE officer.
State Sen. Lydia Edwards, of East Boston, co-chairs the Legislature’s judiciary committee. She said she’s in contact with court officials about the spate of ICE arrests, and is considering whether to propose rules requiring agents to present a warrant signed by a judge. A similar initiative was recently enacted in Illinois, as well as in Connecticut.
“While we require a civil detainer, I think it's worth us talking to the courts about what it means to require a judicial warrant,” Edwards said.
Edwards said any solution — even a state law — should have buy-in from court officials if it’s going to be properly implemented.
Another suggestion, she said, is to broaden access to remote hearings. Not having to go to a courthouse means ICE can’t arrest you there.
“I would love nothing more than for our courts to be a welcoming, safe place for justice, regardless of your immigration status,” she said. “That's what I want.”
WBUR’s Patrick Madden contributed to this story.
Related:
- ICE enforcement in Mass. nets 1,400 arrests in September. Less than half had 'significant' criminal background
- Fitchburg police said they were neutral during an ICE arrest. Onlookers and federal agents saw it differently
- Brother of White House press secretary Leavitt had contentious custody battle with ex, now in ICE custody
srios@wbur.org
Simón Rios is an award-winning reporter, covering immigration, politics and local enterprise stories for WBUR.
He joined the station in 2015 after two years at The Standard-Times in New Bedford. His first assignment at WBUR was to cover “Snowmaggedon,” the blizzards that led to the snowiest winter in Boston’s history. More recently he has covered the impact of immigration enforcement on local communities.
Over a decade at WBUR, Simón’s coverage areas have ranged from housing to politics. His radio and print stories have garnered multiple awards, including for a three part series in 2024, tracing a Haitian family’s journey to Massachusetts and through the state shelter system.
Originally from Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, Simón graduated from Emerson College in 2005. Before journalism, his job titles included barroom musician, carpenter’s helper and cab driver.
Simón is fluent in Spanish. He also speaks basic Portuguese — or “Portuñol” to be more precise. He makes furniture and music in his free time.
Rachell Sanchez-Smith is a WBUR newsroom fellow.
She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism from the University of Arkansas. Previously, Rachell spent three years as a producer and reporter for NPR affiliate KUAF 91.3, where she focused on health, politics and labor.
Most recently, she joined the 2024’ Dow Jones News Fund intern class focusing on data journalism with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
She worked on the “Essential and Exposed” series with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, investigating which workers were most vulnerable in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and how regulators were often overwhelmed, resulting in a published piece with The Associated Press.
Born in Peru but raised in Arkansas, Rachell is most passionate about multilingual reporting and improving representation in newsrooms, founding the only active NAHJ chapter in the state.
In her free time, she enjoys cooking various international dishes, learning languages to “chismear” in or simply cuddling with her rescue cat, Beef.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/12/05/catholic-religon-immigration-protest
Dedham church keeps anti-ICE nativity scene despite pushback
Leaders at St. Susanna’s Parish said they will keep the “ICE was here” sign in a half-empty manger outside of the church despite condemnation from some Catholic leaders and community members.
Statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph are missing from the Dedham church’s annual nativity scene this year. In their place was the sign about ICE, implying that immigration agents had taken the religious icons.
Below it was a smaller sign that read “The Holy Family is safe in our Church ... If you see ICE please call LUCE at 617-370-5023.”
Father Stephen Josoma said he chose to focus the nativity on immigration after speaking with several of the refugee families the church has worked with in the past few years. Several of his congregants, who come from countries like Honduras, Guatemala and Afghanistan, expressed fear about what the stepped-up deportations could mean if they were sent back to the violence they fled.
“These are folks who carry a lot of scars with them. Some of them are physical scars, but most are emotional. They’ve seen their folks killed in front of them,” Josoma said.
He said the display is meant to show “the context Christmas is happening in this year,” adding that current immigration policies feel “brutal” and threaten the status of people who have already settled in the U.S.
The Archdiocese of Boston on Friday called the sign and missing figures a “politically divisive display” and said the parish should restore the créche to its “proper sacred purpose.”
“The people of God have the right to expect that, when they come to church, they will encounter genuine opportunities for prayer and Catholic worship — not divisive political messaging,” the statement read.
The Archdiocese also said St. Susanna did not request or receive permission for the display and said church norms “prohibit the use of sacred objects” for purposes other than worship.
A spokesperson for the Archdiocese, Terrence Donilon, pointed WBUR to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ long-standing statements on immigration, which call for more humane treatment of migrants — especially in detention — while also recognizing a country’s right to regulate its borders. The bishops oppose mass deportation and condemn dehumanizing rhetoric toward both immigrants and law enforcement.
This isn’t the first time St. Susanna’s has clashed with critics over its nativity messaging. For more than a decade, the parish has turned the display into a form of political art, tackling issues like gun control, climate change and other immigration policies.
In 2018, under Josoma’s leadership, the nativity featured a baby Jesus figure in a cage, protesting the Trump administration’s policy that separated immigrant families at the border.
CJ Doyle, head of the Catholic Action League, said he was furious about this year’s scene after receiving complaints from local residents. He accused the parish and Josoma of creating “sacrilegious” political theater.
“This is a case of a dissident priest who has a long history of these crackpot, publicity stunts,” Doyle said. “He’s politicizing Christmas, he’s exploiting the Holy Family, he’s trivializing it and he’s using his position as a pastor to promote his left-wing political ideology.”
Josoma rejected those criticisms, and said this is exactly the kind of moral witness churches should take up.
“I think the role of all churches is to speak out on issues, that’s what the Gospel is about,” he said. “How we treat the least among us is how we ultimately treat Christ.”
He said religious art is meant to provoke reflection, even discomfort, and that critics’ anger toward the display says more about people’s priorities than the installation itself.
“A lot of responses haven’t been anywhere near civil conversation,” he said. “If you ignore the facts, that’s fine, but you can’t have a real dialogue if you don’t accept the reality of what is there.”
As ICE ramps up arrests, Plymouth sheriff's office shuttles men from jail to Hanscom airport
Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)On a recent Saturday morning, sheriff's deputies from Plymouth County escorted 76 men from the jail onto a bus and several vans. All were being held for the federal government, on alleged immigration violations.
Their destination: Hanscom Field, an airport in Bedford used mainly for corporate jets, charters and other private planes. The Plymouth County Sheriff's Office has been making a lot of these van trips, according to interviews and records obtained by WBUR — delivering hundreds of people to federal agents at Hanscom, where they’re flown to states with larger detention centers, often far from Massachusetts.
As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests a growing number of people in this state, Hanscom has emerged as a frequent transfer point. And the Plymouth County sheriff has a hand in helping ICE as it moves detainees around the country.
Sheriff Joseph McDonald's office has taken 545 ICE detainees to the Hanscom airport since President Trump took office, from Jan. 20 through May, according to data obtained in a public records request.
"When they kick up their activities," McDonald said, "we're going to see larger numbers of people passing through our facility on their way to other places."
Plymouth’s jail has had contracts with ICE dating back to 2009. It’s now the only Massachusetts facility with a contract to hold ICE detainees, with 526 beds that are in high demand from immigration officials.
The surge in ICE transfer activity at Hanscom comes as immigration officials have stepped up arrests in Massachusetts and other states. Often, the government is flying people to large ICE detention centers in southern states, including Louisiana and Texas, to await deportation hearings.
The Trump administration says it’s fulfilling a campaign pledge to make the country safer by removing dangerous criminals from the streets. But critics complain the government is also rounding up immigrants who were working and living here peacefully, solely for lacking legal status.
In May alone, federal immigration authorities say they arrested nearly 1,500 people in Massachusetts, 790 of whom, ICE officials allege, have committed crimes beyond being in the country without legal status.
"When they kick up their activities ... we're going to see larger numbers of people passing through our facility on their way to other places."
Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonald
At the Plymouth County jail, this surge makes for brisk business. The sheriff said with so many new detainees arriving in recent months, the typical stay at the facility is brief — 11 days on average.
McDonald said his office has a history of working with other law enforcement and characterized the deal with ICE as part of a longstanding partnership. ICE pays the jail $215 per bed per day, according to the federal contract. McDonald said his office does not financially benefit from the arrangement; federal payments go to the state.
He also said his deputies are not involved in ICE arrests or arranging the flights.
"We don't have any role as far as making those decisions," McDonald said. He said he does not know where detainees are ultimately taken after being dropped off at Hanscom.
"Anything I would tell you would be speculation," he said.
Law enforcement in Massachusetts is generally barred from arresting people based solely on immigration status, under a 2017 ruling by the state’s high court. Local law enforcement can assist ICE in cases when there is a criminal warrant, and sheriff's offices can enter contracts, as Plymouth does, to hold and transport detainees already in ICE custody.
An ICE spokesman declined to discuss the Hanscom flights on the record and the agency did not respond to a list of written questions.
The Massachusetts Port Authority, the agency that oversees the airport, does not have data on ICE flights, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Mehigan. She said the government doesn’t notify the airport about the flights; it mainly uses charter planes owned by a variety of private companies.
One person who tracks ICE flights closely is Tom Cartwright, a former financial executive turned immigration advocate, who’s become a leading authority on the air transfers. He has assembled a database of more than 38,000 flights, both domestic and international, using a number of public sources to identify planes and track their movements.
According to his data, 16 ICE charters flew through Hanscom airport last month – four times the number in May last year. And since President Trump took office, the agency has flown more than 40 flights through Hanscom, he said. Plymouth took ICE detainees to the airport on nearly half of those same dates, according to data WBUR from the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office said its records do not include any additional transports handled directly by ICE. Nor would it have data on any ICE personnel being moved on the flights or detainees from other holding centers in New England.
Cartwright said the rise in flights out of Hanscom is part of a national trend, as the federal government steps up arrests in places like Massachusetts, far from the southern border and ICE’s largest detention centers.
“That just requires more flight legs to move people," said Cartwright, who's been tracking ICE trips since January 2020. He said the flights he’s tracked through Hanscom typically begin in southern and southwestern states, touch down in Hanscom and other locations farther north, and then return to their point of origin.
On May 31, the same day that Plymouth County transported 76 people to Hanscom, Cartwright’s data show two domestic ICE flights landed and took off from the airport.
One of the planes, a Boeing B737, went on to Buffalo, New York, and then to San Antonio, Texas, according to data from flight tracking site ADS-B Exchange. Another, an Airbus A320, went on to Alexandria, Louisiana. Both destinations are in a region of the country with the largest ICE detention facilities.
Cartwright said it is difficult to capture every ICE fight in his data. For instance, he said he can't track smaller moves on commercial airlines, and it's complicated to track military transports. He said ICE also has made it more complicated to track the flights over time by blocking data from some websites.
He said there’s no way to know exactly how many people are on each of the planes: "It's a real mystery," Cartwright said. "You don't know who gets on and who gets off."
The planes Cartwright tracked through Hanscom can typically hold well over 100 passengers, but he said it’s impossible to know precisely how many people are on board at a given time.
ICE's Boston acting Field Director Patricia Hyde during a press conference. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
Federal officials have been outspoken about their efforts to increase enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration.
“ ICE and our federal partners targeted the most dangerous alien offenders in some of the most crime infested neighborhoods of Massachusetts,” Patricia Hyde, the acting field director for ICE's Boston office, said at a recent news conference in Boston.
Hyde pledged that the arrests will continue: “ICE is not going away,” she said.
Critics, including Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, complain the federal government has swept up too many people without serious criminal records, and with little disclosure of the grounds for their arrest.
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"They claim that they're going after the worst criminals amongst the immigrants, and it doesn't appear that that's the truth," said Christopher Eliot, who lives near the Hanscom airport and is a longtime member of the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission, a liaison group between the airport and surrounding towns.
Eliot said he was concerned to learn the Plymouth Sheriff’s office has brought so many detainees to the airport for flights this year.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s a lot of people.”
Eliot said the advisory commission mainly fields complaints about noise and pollution. Still, he said he plans to ask Massport officials about the ICE flights at the commission’s next meeting on June 17.
But he doubts the state can do anything about ICE's use of Hanscom.
“They’re allowed to use the airport,” he said. “The airport doesn't control those flights.”
This segment aired on June 17, 2025.
Related:
What Mass. sheriffs can — and can't — do with ICE
A new sheriff in town: Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu both recently said they won’t allow state or city police to assist any mass deportation efforts by President-elect Donald Trump. But as WBUR’s Deborah Becker reports, a different level of government could play a crucial role in the incoming administration’s expected crackdown on immigrants without legal status: sheriffs.
- What they can do: Sheriffs in Massachusetts oversee county jails for pretrial and short-term inmates. And each of the state’s 14 sheriffs sets their own policies. That includes the ability to sign contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to assist deportation efforts by agreeing to hold people detained by the federal agency.
- What they can’t do: Some, like Worcester County’s Republican sheriff Lew Evangelidis, would like more leeway to keep people in custody for ICE to pick up. However, a 2017 Supreme Judicial Court decision ruled sheriffs cannot do that, if that person would have otherwise been released.
- The latest: Currently, the only facility in the state with an ICE contract is the Plymouth County’s correctional facility. There used to be more, but agreements in Suffolk, Franklin, Bristol and Barnstable counties have been terminated in recent years.
- What impact could Trump have? Sheriffs can’t be required to cooperate with ICE. However, even Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux — a Democrat who ousted a Trump ally in 2022 — conceded the incoming administration could use federal funding as a stick. “That’s probably the easiest, the most direct way that the federal government could impact Massachusetts is withholding those federal funds,” Heroux told Deb.
- Go deeper: Read Deb’s full story here on how local officials at different levels of government are planning to respond to the feds’ deportation push. (And scroll below for Anthony Brooks’ feature on Healey’s shift in tone toward the president-elect.)
Nik DeCosta-Klipa
Senior Editor, Newsletters
ndk@bu.edu
Nik DeCosta-Klipa is a senior editor for newsletters at WBUR.
Nik wakes up early each morning to write WBUR's flagship newsletter, WBUR Today. He runs the day-to-day of all things email. He joined WBUR in 2022 from Boston.com, where he was a staff writer covering local news, politics, and transportation. Nik holds bachelor's degrees in journalism and politics from Ithaca College.
Would Mass. law enforcement help with Trump deportations? It depends who you ask
An ICE agent badge on Sept. 25, 2019, in Revere, Massachusetts. (Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via GettyImages)Massachusetts politicians and criminal justice officials say they expect the incoming Trump administration will make good on its promises to pursue mass deportations — but exactly how remains unclear.
As state, county and city law enforcement leaders evaluate their legal options to refuse assistance — or offer it — to federal agents, competing tactics could emerge. And immigration advocates warn different policies among government agencies will breed confusion.
In a TruthSocial post Monday, President-elect Donald Trump appeared to confirm he plans to declare a national emergency and use "military assets" to deport people in the U.S. without authorization.
Earlier this month, Gov. Maura Healey said state police will not assist in any mass deportation efforts. She told MSNBC the state has several options to protect immigrants' rights, including litigation and executive orders. Studies estimate more than 150,000 people living in Massachusetts lack legal status.
"Every tool in the toolbox," the Democrat said, "is going to be used to protect our residents and protect our state — and certainly to hold the line to protect democracy as a basic principle, right?"
But other law enforcement agencies in the state could participate in deportations.
Republican and former Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, a hardliner on immigration who led the Trump reelection campaign in Massachusetts, expects federal agents will lead any of those efforts in the state.
"When it comes to illegal aliens coming into our communities," Hodgson said, "they're going to — whether or not the governor or local officials want to or not — they're going to make sure that they'll do everything they can to keep everyone safe."
Some officials say that because it appears Trump's mass deportation plans will focus on people with criminal records, those already involved with the court system or incarcerated will likely be the first affected.
This could present a challenge for federal officials. Each of the 14 sheriffs in Massachusetts sets their own policies, according to Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux, Hodgson's Democratic successor.
"The federal government has no authority to tell a sheriff what to do," Heroux said. "In fact, the governor has no authority to tell a sheriff what to do, because we're all independently elected."
Sheriffs cannot violate constitutional rights or state laws, but legal experts note they maintain primary oversight of jails and their short-term inmates. The state attorney general's office does not oversee the facilities and cannot control whether the jails enter contracts with ICE.
Heroux, who on Monday morning announced an ICE detainee unit at his jail has been converted into a training academy and office space, said fewer than 10% of people in his custody lack legal immigration status.
Citing the U.S. Constitution, he said sheriffs cannot be required to help federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detain people.
"I'll cooperate with the federal government," Heroux said. "I'll give them the information they need, but I'm not here to do their job."
Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis, a Republican, said he holds a different perspective.
He's worked closely with ICE since he was elected in 2011 and said this year, there's been a spike in the number of people ICE is seeking to hold at his jail compared to the roughly few dozen inmates with ICE detainers three years ago.
Evangelidis added he's frustrated by a 2017 state Supreme Judicial Court ruling that said jails cannot hold someone solely based on immigration status, if that person would otherwise be released or post bail.
"I have no ability to hold that person beyond the processing time," Evangelidis said. "Even if ICE is on its way and says, 'We'll be there in 40 minutes, hold them,' I can't."
Evangelidis pointed to a case this summer of a man charged with attempted murder, kidnapping and stalking. The court released the man on $2,500 bail despite an immigration detainer against him. Federal immigration officials eventually arrested the man about a month later.
Evangelidis has asked policy-makers to give sheriffs more leeway to work with ICE.
"It would be appropriate to give, for example, myself as sheriff a 12- or 24-hour window to notify ICE and detain people beyond that for that purpose only," Evangelidis said.
The only facility in the state with a federal contract to hold ICE detainees is the Plymouth County House of Correction. Plymouth Sheriff Joseph McDonald, also a Republican, has faced criticism for conditions at the jail. He said he did not want to speculate on what might change under a new president.
Heroux said federal dollars may be one thing that puts sheriffs on the same page.
"That's probably the easiest, the most direct way that the federal government could impact Massachusetts is withholding those federal funds by tying their agenda to the federal funds," Heroux said.
As for local police, who are under the jurisdiction of mayors, some city leaders say their officers will not ask about immigration status.
Mayor Michelle Wu recently reaffirmed Boston is a so-called sanctuary city; under a city ordinance, police can only aid ICE in major criminal investigations.
It is one of at least two-dozen Massachusetts communities immigration advocates say have passed similar protections. In 2017, many of these municipalities were targeted in federal immigration raids during Trump's first term.
Wu, a Democrat, told Channel 5 cities cannot override the federal government, but they can provide some city services to all residents.
“What we can do is make sure that we are doing our part to protect our residents in every possible way, that we are not cooperating with those efforts that actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear and having large-scale economic impact,” Wu said.
But even if city leaders do not cooperate, the incoming administration can utilize the federal court system in its deportation plans. Trump is likely to name a new Massachusetts U.S. Attorney to replace Josh Levy, the acting head of the office, in January — a move that's customary whenever a new president takes office.
Former U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, anticipates the office will take on more immigration cases than usual to help send a message.
"It will serve as a deterrent to let people know that we are going to prosecute federally anyone who gets convicted of a crime and is still in this country," Ortiz said.
Ortiz also expects that resources will be an issue and Washington will have to prioritize how deportations will be carried out.
"You may want to process a significant number, but logistically and practically, you will be limited in what you can do," Ortiz said.
Ortiz pointed out another potential division between the state and the feds. While the state and some municipalities have promised to protect immigrants, the U.S. attorney's office is responsible for defending the White House in litigation over its policies.
Most leaders agreed on this: Because of its reputation as friendly to immigrants, Massachusetts will likely be a target of federal immigration actions.
This segment aired on November 19, 2024.
Deborah Becker
Host/Reporter
debbmc@bu.eduDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education.
Deb is also a substitute host on several WBUR programs and helps produce and report for various WBUR special projects. Deb also worked on the launch of WRNI, Rhode Island's NPR News Station, where she served as Morning Edition host and host of the weekly show "Focus Rhode Island."
Before coming to WBUR, Deb worked at Monitor Radio, the broadcast arm of The Christian Science Monitor newspaper. She also worked at several Boston area radio stations. Deb has received numerous awards for her hosting, newscasts, reporting and investigative reporting from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTNDA), Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, National Education Writers Association, Associated Press, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Alliance on Mental Illness, Parent/Professional Advocacy League and United Press International. She has also completed several fellowships on addiction, mental health, juvenile justice and journalism and the law.
Deb studied journalism at St. Bonaventure University. She lives with her family in central Massachusetts.
Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald, Jr. was first elected in November 2004. He is the thirtieth (30th) High Sheriff of the County of Plymouth, an office which dates back to 1692.
Before being elected to what is, at Common Law, the County’s top law enforcement post, Sheriff McDonald served nine (9) years as an Assistant District Attorney for Plymouth County.
He graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree, and Suffolk University Law School where he received his Juris Doctor degree.
Additionally, Sheriff McDonald is a graduate of the National Sheriff’s Institute (88th Session) at Longmont, CO; FBI LEEDS (59th Session) at the FBI Academy, Quantico, VA; and the Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee Basic Reserve Police Academy (Session 06-01). In 2017, the Sheriff was proud to receive the FBI Trilogy Award, upon the completion of the requisite specialized training in law enforcement supervision, management and command.
Among Sheriff McDonald’s professional associations are: The National Sheriff’s Association (NSA), the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Association (FBI-LEEDA), the American Correctional Association (ACA), Southeast Massachusetts Police Chiefs Association, Southeast Massachusetts Detectives Association, Southeast Massachusetts Prosecutors Association (past secretary), the Plymouth County Police Chiefs Association, Plymouth County Police Officers Association, and the Plymouth District Bar Association (past president). The Sheriff is also a member of the Massachusetts and Federal Bar.
Sheriff McDonald is the past President of the Massachusetts Sheriff’s Association, having held that position from 2013 to 2017.
The sheriff's cruiser
Communications Center
To contact the Communications Center at 24 Long Pond Road in Plymouth, please call 508.830.6200.
The communications network operated by the Plymouth County Sheriff's Office is a complex combination of telephone and radio systems, wireless communications, fixed base stations and mobile and portable two-way radios integrated with leased land-line technology. The network is configured into four individual systems that are all coordinated by the Communications Center located on the first floor of the Sheriff's Office's Public Safety Building.
Department Contact List
| Position | Phone number | Other | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sheriff | Joseph D. McDonald, Jr. | 508.830.6200 | jmcdonald@pcsdma.org |
| Special Sheriff | Gerald Pudolsky | 508.830.6200 | |
| Senior Advisor | Paul Lawton | 508.830.6208 | plawton@pcsdma.org cell 508 580 8300 |
| Sheriff's Office Manager | Siobhan Budge | 508.830.6339 | |
| Sheriff's Executive Assistant | Katelyn Harrington | 508.830.6204 | |
| Superintendent of Plymouth County Correctional Facility | Antone Moniz | 508.830.6238 | Correctional Facility |
| Administrative Assistant | Deborah Dougenik | 508.830.6296 | Correctional Facility |
| Assistant Superintendent of Plymouth County Correctional Facility | Ralph Mattivello | 508.830.6257 | Correctional Facility |
| Assistant Superintendent of Law Enforcement | James Muscato | 508.830.6200 | Field Services, Including Deputy Sheriffs jmuscato@pcsdma.org |
| Assistant Superintendent of BCI | Scott Petersen | 508.830.6345 | Bureau of Criminal Investigations spetersen@pcsdma.org |
| Chief Legal Counsel | Isabel Eonas | 508.830.6278 | ieonas@pcsdma.org |
| General Counsel - Records Access Officer | Jessica Kenny | 508.830.6200 x867 | |
| Director of Human Resources | Mark Gabriel | 508.830.6288 | |
| Director of Training/SEMA | Elizabeth Smith | 508.732.1801 | |
| Director of Finance | Julie O'Sullivan | 508.732.1854 | |
| Director of Information Technology | Tony DeBoe | 508.732.1807 | adeboe@pcsdma.org |
| Director of External Affairs | Karen Barry | 508.830.6264 | kbarry@pcsdma.org |
| Health Services Administrator | Dawn Struzzieri | 508.732.1819 | |
| ADS of Field Services | Nichole Bradley | 508.830.6324 | |
| ADS of Field Services | Arthur Short | 508.830.6266 | |
| ADS of Facilities | Richard Mola | 508.830.6272 | |
| ADS of Farm Operations | John Hickey | 508.326.6674 | |
| ADS of Communications | David Acevich | 508.830.6210 | |
| Recruitment Officer | Brian Conroy | 508.830.6388 | |
| Captain of Two-Way Radio Communications | Scott Billings | 508.830.6379 | All Portable/Mobile Radios & Fixed Infrastructure |
| Captain of Communications | Katie Moriarty | 508.830.6359 | 911 |
Contacts and Directions
Plymouth County Correctional Facility
26 Long Pond Road, Plymouth MA 02360
Phone: 508-830-6200
Fax: 508-830-6201
View Map
Civil Process Office
22 Cottage Street, Brockton MA 02301
P.O. BOX 1663
Brockton MA 02303
Business Hours: 8:30AM to 4:30PM
Phone: 508-580-2110 or 508-746-8800
Fax: 508-586-8649
View Map
Plymouth County Sheriff's Office Admin Building
24 Long Pond Road, Plymouth MA 02360
Phone: 508-830-6200
ICE arrests illegal alien serving as a local police officer after attempting to unlawfully purchase firearm in Maine
At the time of his arrest, Evans was employed as a reserve police officer with the Old Orchard Beach Police Department.
“Jon Luke Evans not only broke U.S. immigration law, but he also illegally attempted to purchase a firearm. Shockingly, Evans was employed as a local law enforcement officer,” said ICE ERO Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia H. Hyde. “The fact that a police department would hire an illegal alien and unlawfully issue him a firearm while on duty would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. We have a police department that was knowingly breaking the very law they are charged with enforcing in order to employ an illegal alien. ICE Boston will continue to prioritize public safety by arresting and removing criminal alien threats from our New England communities.”
Evans admitted to ICE officers that he attempted to purchase the firearm for his employment as a police officer with the Old Orchard Beach Police Department. His attempt to purchase the firearm triggered an alert to ATF agents, who worked in coordination with ICE to make the arrest.
Evans lawfully entered the United States Sept. 24, 2023, at the Miami International Airport, in Florida. However, he violated the terms of his lawful admission when he overstayed his visa. Evans was scheduled to depart the U.S. October 1, 2023, but never boarded the flight.
In a very similar case in April, ICE officers in Falmouth arrested Gratien Milandou Wamba, an illegally present, 32-year-old citizen of Congo, who was working as a corrections officer. Officers with ICE Boston’s Scarborough, Maine sub office arrested Milandou Wamba for immigration violations after he allegedly illegally attempted to purchase a firearm.
Members of the public can report crimes and suspicious activity by dialing 866-DHS-2-ICE (866-347-2423) or completing the online tip form.
Learn more about ICE’s mission to increase public safety in our communities on X at @EROBoston.
ICE.gov
An official website of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
ICE Flight Tracking Project Now Officially Housed at Human Rights First
Washington, D.C. — Human Rights First is proud to officially house an innovative initiative that monitors and analyzes U.S. immigration enforcement flights. The project was developed and led by retired financial executive and immigration advocate Tom Cartwright for nearly six years. Human Rights First will continue Tom’s critical work under a new name: the ICE Flight Monitor.
Between 2020 and 2025, Tom Cartwright tracked over 40,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flights, providing an unprecedented window into the hidden operations of the U.S. immigration enforcement system.
Cartwright’s journey is both unlikely and inspiring: a financial executive who, in retirement, transformed into a leading expert on immigration enforcement flights. Driven by a profound commitment to justice and accountability, he applied his data and analytical expertise from the financial sector to expose the vast, opaque scale of ICE flights. His volunteer work has become an indispensable tool, informing litigation, shaping congressional oversight, and galvanizing public awareness around immigration enforcement practices.
“Tom Cartwright has demonstrated extraordinary innovation and dedication in building this initiative from the ground up, and we are honored to carry his work forward,” said Uzra Zeya, CEO and President of Human Rights First. “His work brings essential transparency to U.S. government actions impacting thousands of lives and stands as a powerful example of citizen-driven accountability in defense of human rights and democracy.”
“It’s been my honor and privilege to virtually accompany and acknowledge the dignity of nearly 800,000 people deported—and millions moved between detention centers—under ICE Air’s covert and opaque process. This work has always been about bringing transparency to a system designed to operate in the shadows. I am so thankful that the dedicated team at Human Rights First will not only continue this work but expand and elevate it to a higher level,” said Tom Cartwright.
At a time when communities across the country are being ripped apart by lawless ICE enforcement actions, people (including families) are being detained in inhumane conditions and deported without due process to an expanding list of countries, the ICE Flight Monitor provides accessible, reliable data — essential for accountability. By formally integrating the ICE Flight Monitor, Human Rights First strengthens its capacity to challenge abuses of power and uphold transparency as a cornerstone of democracy.
Tom Cartwright developed a methodology to track ICE flights using publicly available aviation data and launched the ICE Flight Monitor in 2020. Between January 2020 and July 2025, he tracked over 40,000 flights, providing critical insights into immigration enforcement operations. He continues to serve as an advisor to the project now housed at Human Rights First.
Cartwright is a former Executive Vice President at JPMorgan, where he spent nearly 40 years in the financial services industry. He holds both a BS and an MS in Finance from the University of Illinois.
In semi-retirement, Cartwright shifted his focus to become a dedicated advocate for refugees and migrants. He has volunteered extensively in refugee camps in Greece and along the Texas–Mexico border, and has worked to raise awareness about refugee issues in Washington, D.C.
Cartwright and the ICE Flight Monitor in the press:
- How Louisiana Built Trump’s Busiest ICE Deportation Hub – The New York Times
- The Rising Cost of ICE Flying Immigrants to Far-Flung Detention Centers – Bloomberg
- Trump’s Deportation Flights Increased in May, Data Shows – The New York Times
- The pace of Trump’s deportation flights is so far similar to Biden’s – CNN Politics
- The Retired J.P. Morgan Executive Tracking Trump’s Deportation Flights – The Atlantic
- Thomas Cartwright, from JP Morgan executive to ICE’s sole flight tracker – EL PAÍS
- Migrants Vanish Into Opaque ICE Detention System – The Wallstreet Journal
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Healey demands ICE stop flying immigrant detainees out of Hanscom airport
A plane sits on the tarmac at Hanscom Field airport in Bedford. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)Gov. Maura Healey is demanding that immigration enforcement authorities "immediately stop" using Hanscom Field airport to fly detainees out of state.
In a letter dated Dec. 12 to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, the governor called ICE's use of Hanscom to remove people from the state "part of its disturbing and anti-American deportation tactics."
WBUR has reported on hundreds of detainees being shuttled to the Bedford airport from Plymouth County jail to board ICE flights. People arrested by immigration agents in the Boston area are often flown in private jets to Louisiana or Texas, in many cases without notice to their families or lawyers.
ICE's use of Hanscom for immigration flights has garnered protests in the past. The agency temporarily stopped using the airfield in late July, but began detainee flights again in September as part of a surge in immigration enforcement in the state. ICE did not explain at the time why it paused flights from Hanscom.
Healey noted in the letter that a "significant majority" of people detained by ICE in Massachusetts over the past year "have no criminal convictions or charges." She said flying them far from their support systems and legal counsel "often within hours of arrest — is intentionally cruel and purposely obstructs the due process and legal representation they are owed."
The governor closed her letter demanding that ICE "immediately stop using any Massachusetts airports and private jets to deport residents and obstruct due process, and to halt this practice across this country."
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Massachusetts Port Authority, a quasi-public agency, operates Hanscom. In a statement, a Massport spokeswoman said “ICE flights" are charter flights operated out of the airport.:
"Massport does not receive prior knowledge of these flights, nor does the Authority have a role in their operation," she said.
She said Massport "cannot discriminate who can or cannot use the airport. Public use airports like Hanscom are required to accommodate all flights to the airport, including those by or on behalf of the federal government."
WBUR's Andrea Perdomo-Hernandez contributed to this report.
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An unopposed Boston Mayor Wu celebrates re-election victory
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu speaks to supporters at her Election Night party at Grace by Nia in the Seaport. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)A progressive Democrat whose national profile climbed as she criticized the Trump administration’s claims about violent crime in Boston and its blitz to arrest immigrants, Wu ran unopposed for the top of the ticket in Tuesday’s sleepy election. She had trounced her main opponent, nonprofit leader Josh Kraft, in the September preliminary election.
The 40-year-old mother of three celebrated her victory alongside family, several political allies and supporters in the Seaport at the restaurant Grace by Nia.
Speaking with reporters, Wu said she will continue to focus on "the big priorities we know matter for families."
"We want Boston to be the hub of the universe's talent, the best city for families, the safest city, the greenest city, a place where people from all around the world with big ideas continue to come as they have for 400 years to help make sure that our future is the brightest that it can possibly be," she said.
Wu’s commanding victory comes as Boston faces a set of challenges, both at home and at the federal level. As President Trump continues to rail against cities with Democratic mayors, Wu must both defend city policies and manage shrinking city revenues.
Back in March, Wu received plaudits after tangling with a Republican-led House panel over Boston’s “Trust Act,” which limits how local police work with federal immigration authorities.
On Tuesday night she lashed out at Trump: "That is what this election was about here in Boston. Not just how we lead, but what we believe. Whether we believe that wealth should buy power — we don't. Whether experience matters — it does. That's right. And most of all, whether we will bow to a criminal who acts like a king."
Meanwhile, she’s under pressure to tackle the city’s affordability and housing crisis; the rising cost of White Stadium; a controversial bike lane rollout; and the ongoing addiction and homelessness epidemic linked to the city’s Mass. and Cass area.
The mayor shared the stage with at-large councilors Ruthzee Louijeune and Henry Santana, whose successful campaigns for at-large city councilor seats were backed by Wu. They and the council’s two other at-large incumbents — Julia Mejia and Erin Murphy — beat out challenges from four other contenders, including former longtime District 3 councilor Frank Baker.
Incumbent At-Large City Councilors Ruthzee Louijeune and Henry Santana embrace on election night. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
This article was originally published on November 04, 2025.
Eve Zuckoff
ezuckoff@wbur.org
Eve Zuckoff is WBUR's city reporter, covering Boston politics, breaking news, and enterprise stories. She’s covering City Hall and the mayoral race, and keeping an eye on all things Boston, from neighborhood issues to the cost of living and policies that affect the lives of residents.
Previously, Eve covered the environment and human impacts of climate change across Cape Cod, the coast and islands for NPR’s CAI. After joining the station in 2019 as a Report For America Corps member, Eve delivered stories on rising temperatures, critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, controversy over a proposed military machine gun range and the plight of migrants sent to Martha’s Vineyard.
Her work has earned three National Edward R. Murrow Awards and 10 National PMJA First Place Awards, among other honors.
This is a return to WBUR for Eve. She contributed to the first season of “Last Seen,” a 10-part-investigative podcast about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist produced by WBUR and The Boston Globe. A Boston University graduate, she also worked as a freelance producer on Radio Boston.
An MIT professor was fatally shot at his home and police launched a homicide investigation
BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot at his home near Boston, and authorities said Tuesday they had launched a homicide investigation.
Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was shot Monday night at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died at a local hospital on Tuesday, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
The prosecutor’s office said no suspects had been taken into custody as of Tuesday afternoon, and that its investigation was ongoing.
Loureiro, who joined MIT in 2016, was named last year to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he aimed to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of the school’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm.
Loureiro, who was married, grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon before joining MIT, it said.
“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told a campus publication.
The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, said in a statement that Loureiro’s death was a “shocking loss.”
The homicide investigation in Brookline comes as police in Providence, Rhode Island, about 50 miles away, continue to search for the gunman who killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University on Saturday. The FBI on Tuesday said it knew of no connection between the crimes.
A 22-year-old student at Boston University who lives near Loureiro’s apartment in Brookline told The Boston Globe she heard three loud noises Monday evening and feared it was gunfire. “I had never heard anything so loud, so I assumed they were gunshots,” Liv Schachner was quoted as saying. “It’s difficult to grasp. It just seems like it keeps happening.”
Some of Loureiro’s students visited his home, an apartment in a three-story brick building, Tuesday afternoon to pay their respects, the Globe reported.
The U.S. ambassador to Portugal, John J. Arrigo, expressed his condolences in an online post that honored Loureiro for his leadership and contributions to science.
“It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” Loureiro said when he was named to lead the plasma science lab last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”
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