Mass. GOP slams House's rejection of bill that would let cops partner with ICE
Chief among them was language authored by state House Minority Leader Bradley H. Jones Jr., R-20th Middlesex, that would have allowed local cops and courts to cooperate with civil immigration detainer orders issued by federal authorities.
The action came as the lower chamber plowed through hundreds of amendments to its version of the annual state spending blueprint.
'Rather than endorse a commonsense approach to dealing with the spate of violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants harbored in Massachusetts, Democrats would rather bury their heads in the sand about a problem that continues to persist long after the migrant shelter crisis hit its high-water mark,' state Republlican Party Chairperson Amy Carnevale said in a statement.
A 2017 state Supreme Judicial Court ruling known as the 'Lunn Decision' limits how state and local law enforcement assist with federal immigration enforcement, according to the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Tuesday's House vote marks the second time in about a year that majority House Democrats have turned away Republican efforts to tweak state law.
The language rejected Tuesday would have, if approved, allowed an "employee of the commonwealth who holds police or sheriff powers who has lawful custody of a person to detain the person for up to 12 hours upon receipt of a written detention request from ICE and an administrative warrant for arrest or warrant for removal or deportation.'
In her statement, Carnevale said House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, and his fellow Democrats have a 'habit of adopting GOP proposals for immigration reform only after disastrous consequences and cost overruns.'
The latter is a reference to the House imposing limits on how long people can stay in Massachusetts' emergency shelter system.
'I hope Democratic leadership does not wait for even more violent tragedies to occur in our Commonwealth before they finally wake up to the crisis we're facing,' Carnevale said.
State House News Service reports are included in this story.
This is the word most commonly associated with Trump in his 2nd term
Boston prepares for fight after Trump signs order threatening sanctuary cities
Filing in R.I. case reveals EPA set to cancel nearly 800 environmental justice grants
Mass. schools boss: Immigration chill leading to 'extended absences'
Feds launch racial discrimination investigations targeting Harvard Law Review
Read the original article on MassLive.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
a few seconds ago
- Chicago Tribune
President Donald Trump orders US nuclear subs repositioned over statements from ex-Russian leader Medvedev
WASHINGTON — In a warning to Russia, President Donald Trump said Friday he's ordering the repositioning of two U.S. nuclear submarines 'based on the highly provocative statements' of the country's former president, Dmitry Medvedev, who has raised the prospect of war online. Trump posted on his social media site that, based on the 'highly provocative statements' from Medvedev, he had 'ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.' The president added, 'Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.' It wasn't clear what impact Trump's order would have on U.S. nuclear subs, which are routinely on patrol in the world's hotspots, but it comes at a delicate moment in the Trump administration's relations with Moscow. Trump has said that special envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Russia to push Moscow to agree to a ceasefire in its war with Ukraine and has threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made. He cut his 50-day deadline for action to 10 days, with that window set to expire next week. The post about the sub repositioning came after Trump, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, had posted that Medvedev was a 'failed former President of Russia' and warned him to 'watch his words.' Medvedev responded hours later by writing, 'Russia is right on everything and will continue to go its own way.' And that back-and-forth started earlier this week when Medvedev wrote, 'Trump's playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10' and added, 'He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn't Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.' Asked as he was leaving the White House on Friday evening for a weekend at his estate in New Jersey about where he was repositioning the subs, Trump didn't offer any specifics. 'We had to do that. We just have to be careful,' he said. 'A threat was made, and we didn't think it was appropriate, so I have to be very careful.' Trump also said, 'I do that on the basis of safety for our people' and 'we're gonna protect our people.' He later added of Medvedev, 'He was talking about nuclear.' 'When you talk about nuclear, we have to be prepared,' Trump said. 'And we're totally prepared.' Medvedev was Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, while Vladimir Putin was barred from seeking a third consecutive term, and then stepped aside to let him run again. Now deputy chairman of Russia's National Security Council, which Putin chairs, Medvedev has been known for his provocative and inflammatory statements since the start of the war in 2022. That's a U-turn from his presidency, when he was seen as liberal and progressive. Medvedev has frequently wielded nuclear threats and lobbed insults at Western leaders on social media. Some observers have argued that with his extravagant rhetoric, Medvedev is seeking to score political points with Putin and Russian military hawks. One such example before the latest spat with Trump came on July 15, after Trump announced plans to supply Ukraine with more weapons via its NATO allies and threatened additional tariffs against Moscow. Medvedev posted then, 'Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn't care.'
The Hill
a few seconds ago
- The Hill
Kevin O'Leary on Trump's BLS firing: ‘Don't shoot the messenger'
'Shark Tank' investor Kevin O'Leary on Friday criticized President Trump for proposing the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) head be fired after reporting a decline in job growth. Hours before his comments, Trump slammed Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in a Truth Social post alleging she altered job reports to favor former Vice President Harris during the November election and said he'd given his team orders to dismiss the Biden appointee 'IMMEDIATELY.' Her departure comes three years ahead of schedule. 'We had a bad print on jobs. I did not agree on whacking the commissioner. I don't like that,' O'Leary said during a Friday appearance on CNN. 'Whacking statisticians makes no sense whatsoever. You don't shoot the messenger,' he added. O'Leary has been relatively supportive of Trump's policies, including his unprecedented global trade negotiations in recent days. However, he said there's some uncertainty surrounding markets due to outstanding deals with major U.S. partners. 'I think the market is a little concerned about major trading partners not getting deals yet. It's not a good idea to have 35 percent tariffs on Canada. We know that that's coming into place at midnight right now unless something magic happens,' O'Leary told anchor Kasie Hunt. 'So with this volatility, it's more about future earnings. But a lot of this stuff, including the trade print or the job print noise, just noise. You don't make decisions based on one print,' he added. Friday's job report touted the creation of 73,000 jobs but also lowered previously reported numbers from job growth in May and June by 200,000 citing a substantially reduced statistic than originally published. Trump slammed McEntarfer for the errors. 'Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes. McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months,' the president wrote. 'Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative. The Economy is BOOMING under 'TRUMP'…' he added. However, onlookers critiqued the president for slamming the BLS commissioner for the shortcomings. 'President Trump is once again destroying the credibility of our government by firing expert and nonpartisan officials because he does not like the facts that they present,' said Max Stier, the CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service told NBC News. 'Governments that go down this path find themselves in ugly territory very quickly.'
a minute ago
Trump's long history of bashing jobs report numbers dates back to 2016: Analysis
President Donald Trump's history of criticizing the Bureau of Labor Statistics' jobs report has surfaced in the wake of his decision to fire commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday. Trump's public frustrations with the economics and statistics agency appear to date back to his 2016 presidential campaign. "Don't believe those phony numbers," then-candidate Trump said in his New Hampshire victory speech during his first campaign for the White House. Last August, Trump claimed without evidence that former President Joe Biden's administration was "caught fraudulently manipulating" job statistics, when the agency publicly disclosed that the economy created fewer than 818,000 jobs between April of 2023 and March of 2024 than initial estimates suggested. "There's never been any revision like this," Trump said at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Aug. 21, 2024. "They wanted it to come out after the election, but somehow it got leaked," he claimed at the time. Trump did not provide evidence that the information publicly disclosed by the agency was leaked. Then-Labor Secretary Julie Su in November 2024 defended the figures, and also suggested the numbers were impacted by Hurricane Helene's impact on the southeastern United States, and labor strikes. "The labor market remains very strong, and this shows what happens when you have a president and a vice president who are fighting for workers every single day," Su said at the time. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) uses several surveys for estimating employment levels in the U.S. and revisions are common. Every monthly Jobs Report has a blurb at the end that updates the figures from the previous two months based on new data. The revision that Trump was referencing was made public on Aug. 21, and updated with final figures in February 2025, according to the BLS website. The same downward revisions also took place during Trump's first term, under then-BLS commissioner William W. Beach. The agency determined 518,000 fewer jobs were created in March 2019 than it had initially reported. Alternatively, Trump had no complaints about the jobs report produced under McEntarfer -- a Biden appointee -- right before the 2024 election, which showed the U.S. gained 12,000 jobs in October. The then-candidate referenced the low numbers while criticizing the Biden-Harris administration at a rally in Milwaukee. "They did 12,000 jobs," Trump said to boos at the rally on Nov. 1. "It's hundreds of thousands of jobs less than it should be," he added. Trump was also quick to embrace the jobs reports as president -- when they were favorable. In March 2017 -- when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the economy added 235,000 jobs the prior month -- then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump had full faith in the positive report, despite calling it "phony" in the past. "I talked to the president prior to this and he said to quote him very clearly: 'They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now,'" Spicer said to reporters at the time. Trump's decision to fire McEntarfer on Friday came after the report found the U.S. had added 73,000 jobs in July, according to data from the BLS. The figure marked a slowdown from 147,000 jobs added in the previous month. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%, keeping it at near-historic lows, according to the report. The report provided new estimates for two previous months, significantly dropping the government's estimate of jobs added in May and June. The fresh data indicated a notable slowdown in hiring as Trump's tariffs took hold over recent months. Trump criticized McEntarfer over the revisions, saying without evidence that the revisions suggested jobs statistics had been "manipulated." ABC News has reached out to McEntarfer for a comment. The Trump administration described the downward revisions as an unwelcome sign for the U.S. economy but did not dispute the data. "Obviously, they're not what we want to see," Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on Friday morning. Asked by reporters as he departed the White House on Friday about the reason for McEntarfer's firing, Trump said he believes the economy is doing well and claimed the latest jobs numbers were "phony." "I believe the numbers were phony just like they were before the election, and there were other times," Trump said, pointing to a previous revision in the jobs numbers last year that he claimed, without evidence, was an attempt to benefit Democrats heading into the election. He said this despite using the numbers as a talking point in his campaign.
