Battenfeld: Determined Healey making an attempt to rewrite historical past on migrant disaster

Gov. Maura Healey is desperately making an attempt to rewrite historical past on the $1 billion a yr migrant disaster, hoping to stave off a potent election yr concern which threatens her try at a second time period.

Healey has the monumental activity of making an attempt to squirm out from below the issue, developing with an entire new narrative to cowl her ineptitude and errors in how she initially handled the disaster.

She clearly realizes what a crushing concern it may very well be for her reelection subsequent yr, so is now claiming she “inherited” the migrant drawback from the Biden administration and is asserting Massachusetts isn’t a sanctuary state.

After being sharply criticized by Republicans operating for the Nook Workplace, Healey is making an attempt to flip the narrative, saying she’s the one who straightened out the mess.

Will voters purchase it? Most likely not. However Healey is in political mode now, the place she is at her greatest. She’s been a disappointing governor however is a superb campaigner.

“This is a crisis that I inherited when I became governor and started in 2023,” she claimed in a televised “On the Record” interview this yr. “We’ve worked really hard and I’ve taken a number of steps to actually reform the way the system operates and make changes.”

That declare went unchallenged within the interview.

She repeated that story when interviewed by the New York Instances.

“It’s been a challenging situation, to say the least,” Healey mentioned. “And my frustration has been, you know, as a state governor, I am inheriting the problems caused by federal inaction.”

Requested within the TV interview concerning the $1 billion a yr the state has been spending for the emergency resort shelters, she mentioned “We’re on track to reduce that. We’re also on track to close all hotels. They were hotels that were operating when I became governor.”

Healey’s declare about inheriting the issue is ludicrous and never plausible.

It’s true that late in 2022, below Gov. Charlie Baker, the migrant disaster was simply beginning, with about 3,000 households within the shelter system. However that quantity doubled in 2023 and 2024 whereas Healey was governor.

Even earlier than she turned governor, Lawyer Basic Healey opposed a Trump administration rule that will bar entry to the asylum course of for 1000’s of migrants.

“The Trump administration has done everything possible to deny access to asylum and make life miserable for people seeking refuge in the United States,” she mentioned.

In her 2022 marketing campaign, she expressed assist for migrants and employed a self-described undocumented immigrant as deputy political director.

In her first yr as governor, she arrange “family welcome centers” for migrants, gave them drivers’ licenses, pushed for work permits and urged residents to take them into their properties.

“Our administration has been working hard to meet this unprecedented need and use every resource at our disposal to help families,” she mentioned in June 2023.

It wasn’t till August 2023 that she declared an emergency over the surge in migrants.

However even then, she mentioned migrants have been solely coming right here as a result of it’s “too dangerous to stay” of their dwelling international locations.

“They’re here because Massachusetts has and will always be a beacon of hope, compassion, humanity and opportunity,” she mentioned.

Her administration opened dozens of resort shelters and put 1000’s of migrants there. At one level late in 2023, greater than 100 accommodations have been getting used as shelters.

She additionally infamously positioned migrants on the Melnea Cass recreation middle in Roxbury over the sturdy objections of native residents who used it, a transfer that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu allowed and stood weakly by with out stopping.

It was solely in Might 2025 that Healey declared accommodations have been no place to boost a household and started a plan to shut them – greater than two years after she turned governor.

And it was solely in January 2025 that Healey ordered an inspection of all state run emergency shelters and a “full review” of the consumption course of after a Dominican migrant was arrested at a shelter in Revere allegedly possessing an AR-15 and $1 million value of fentanyl.

“It’s outrageous that this individual took advantage of our shelter system to engage in criminal activity,” she mentioned in an announcement to the Herald.

Healey additionally claimed final yr that everybody who enters the state run shelters is “vetted.” This got here after a Haitian nationwide was charged with raping a 15-year-old migrants woman at a Rockland shelter.

What concerning the two years that glided by when Healey was governor and did nothing to cease the felony exercise within the shelters, which was nicely documented? Her administration didn’t do background checks, permitting the issue.

Healey the truth is went to nice lengths to guard migrants residing right here illegally, doubling down on Democrats’ plans to combat mass deportations.

“The key here is that every tool in the toolbox has got to be used to protect our citizens, to protect our residents,” Healey advised MSNBC final December after Trump vowed to start out deporting unlawful immigrants when he took workplace.

Now Healey is being non-transparent about the place the migrants residing within the accommodations are going to go. The place are all these folks going precisely? Nobody will say. Additionally left unclear is how the state will deal with the long run leases the administration signed with the accommodations.

Healey additionally conveniently neglects to say the scores of no-bid contracts her administration handed out to pay for the resort shelters and home and feed the migrants.