Gov. Maura Healey is right in calling for the prosecution of people who invade churches.
But she is wrong in blaming ICE for the crime, when the only people invading churches are half-crazed anti-ICE zealots in Minnesota.
These are the mean-spirited rioters who stormed the Baptist Cities Church in St. Paul January 18 to protest ICE’s (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operation in outing, arresting, and deporting violent illegal immigrant criminals.
The mob invaded and circled worshipers and their families, including children, and chanted anti-ICE slogans in the faces, and shutting down and making a mockery of the Christian religious service.
The mob, in its thuggish behavior, came to the defense of the violent illegal immigrant criminals who swarmed into sanctuaries in Minneapolis — and elsewhere in the country– during hapless President Joe Biden’s disastrous open borders policy.
President Donald Trump has vowed to get them out and ICE has been the spearhead in the removal campaign, which has met with fierce resistance in Minnesota.
There a pair of blowhard public officials– Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey—have recklessly led the opposition to ICE’s operation which– inadvertently or not—has led to the death of two people at the hands of ICE agents.
So far, a dozen or so church rioters have been arrested and charged with conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of the church worshipers.
Among those arrested include Don Lemon, a former CNN celebrity, who was part of the mob. Lemon claimed he was there as a journalist, not a participant, although that did not stop him from getting in the face of Davd Easterwood, the pastor, who vainly attempted to retore order.
While Trump sent Border Czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis to tone down the situation—and the rhetoric—it did not seem to have much impact as Democrats only ramped up their attacks on ICE and Trump.
Locally, both Sen. Eddie Markey and Rep. Seth Moulton, who is challenging Markey in the Democrat primary, have called the death of the two Minneapolis citizens murder—without any proof– and said that ICE should be abolished.
While the pair talk a lot to appease the radical left of the Democrat Party, their talk has little to do with ICE in Massachusetts.
That’s where Healey, as chief executive of the state, comes in.
But she is as bad as Markey and Moulton, and the rest of the Democrats.
In her vision, it is the people who need protection from ICE, and not protection from the violet criminal illegal immigrants who are killing and raping them.
Which is why she filed legislation last week “to protect the people of Massachusetts from abuses” by Trump and ICE, and not abuses from the criminal illegal immigrant murderers, terrorists, rapists, and child sexual predators that Trump is kicking out of the country.
Her bill would keep ICE out of places they don’t go into anyway, like schools, childcare programs, hospitals and churches. She needlessly included courthouse where Massachusetts judges let wanted illegal immigrant criminals out the backdoor anyway.
“In Massachusetts and across the country, we continue to see unlawful and unconstitutional actions by ICE that are meant to intimidate and instill fear in our communities,” she said.
But she made no mention of the intimidation and fear spread everywhere by violent criminal illegal immigrants.
Her position siding with rioters and criminals over the average citizen is not new.
Days after the May 25, 2020, George Floyd murder hundreds of rioters thrashed, burned and looted business in downtown Boston, particularly on Newbury Street. Nine Boston cops were hospitalized.
Healey, then attorney general and the state’s “chief law enforcement officer,” enforced no laws but sided with the rioters. She said, “Yes, America is burning. But that’s how forests grow.”
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas can be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com.
