Residents of Massachusetts will have to live with more illegal aliens among them after the Democrat-controlled government passed the "strongest" protections against Immigration and Customs Enforcement yet.
Gov. Maura Healey (D-Mass.) signed the Protect Act on Wednesday in a ceremony at an economic development agency in the city of Chelsea.
'ICE is so wrong in what it's doing, and ICE needs to be stopped, here in Massachusetts and around this country, just stopped in its tracks.'
Healey claimed the law included the "strongest" protections for illegal aliens against ICE.
"I think we can agree that we need immigration reform in this country," Healey said to reporters. "We can agree we need controls at the border. We can also agree that ICE is so wrong in what it's doing, and ICE needs to be stopped, here in Massachusetts and around this country, just stopped in its tracks."
The bill will restrict ICE agents from performing civil immigration arrests without a warrant at courthouses, schools, child care centers, and health care facilities.
Healey said the fear of ICE operations has led the immigrant community in Chelsea to stop going to doctor appointments and to take their kids out of school. Chelsea schools have reported a decline in attendance.
She also claimed that ICE agents at courthouses have kept witnesses and others from showing up to their hearings.
"This is what ICE is doing to our people and our neighborhoods," Healey said. "All of this done by ICE agents, who are untrained, unqualified, and unfit to do their jobs."
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The Trump administration has increased immigration enforcement this summer, leading to a record number of detentions for the month of July, according to records obtained by CBS News.
"The Protect Act is the strongest law in the country to protect people from ICE, and to protect public safety," Healey concluded.
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The left suddenly fears that artificial intelligence will replace American workers. It showed far less concern when illegal immigration undercut wages and jobs.
The double standard reveals a larger economic vision: protection for the credentialed class, cheap labor at the bottom, and little concern for the working Americans caught between them.
The left has built a bifurcated economy because it has bifurcated loyalties. Neither side of that arrangement puts America’s working class first.
Progressive warnings about AI often begin with the claim that employers will use new technology to replace costly labor or avoid training new employees. One progressive platform warns that AI could cause massive labor-market disruption. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposes taxing AI so that its gains do not flow only to the wealthy.
The concern isn’t inherently foolish. New technology can displace workers, at least temporarily, and policymakers should consider how people adapt. But the left’s labor solidarity becomes strangely selective when the competing worker entered the country illegally.
The Migration Policy Institute recently estimated that the illegal immigrant population may have reached 15.8 million. The Biden years also produced more than 10 million border encounters, although that figure includes repeat attempts and excludes people who evaded detection.
Meanwhile, the July Bureau of Labor Statistics report counted 7.1 million unemployed Americans. Those numbers do not prove that every illegal worker displaced a citizen. They do make it absurd to pretend that millions of additional workers have no effect on wages, bargaining power, or employment.
The standard answer is that illegal immigrants perform jobs Americans refuse to do. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) put the argument plainly: In a capitalist economy, someone will always do the work others do not want.
But jobs are not fixed objects with permanently assigned wages. When employers cannot attract workers, they must raise pay, improve conditions, invest in equipment, or change the way the work is performed. Labor scarcity gives workers leverage.
Progressives claim to understand that principle when they campaign for higher legal wage floors. The five states with the highest minimum wages are deep blue. Democratic lawmakers routinely demand “living wages” and stronger benefits.
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Yet the same politicians short-circuit the market mechanism that might raise wages naturally. They permit a large supply of unauthorized labor, including an estimated 8.5 million people working off the books, to fill jobs at wages and under conditions many would never accept.
That arrangement is not compassionate to workers. It allows employers to avoid the higher pay, benefits, and taxes that legal labor would require. It also leaves illegal immigrants vulnerable to exploitation because their status limits their ability to challenge abuse.
The result is a two-tiered labor market.
At the top sit credentialed professionals whose jobs may be threatened by AI. Their anxieties receive white papers, Senate hearings, tax proposals, and sympathetic coverage. At the bottom sit unauthorized workers whom progressive politicians describe as indispensable because they perform society’s least desirable tasks.
Crockett’s own words and similar comments from other Democrats expose the hierarchy. The jobs at the top must be protected from technological competition. The jobs at the bottom must remain cheap enough that Americans supposedly will not take them.
The people excluded from both priorities are working-class citizens.
They are told that automation may eliminate their better-paying opportunities but that low-wage jobs cannot pay more because imported labor must fill them. They face high legal wage mandates and benefit requirements on one side, then competition from off-the-books labor on the other.
Government benefits without strong work requirements can compound the problem by creating a steep penalty for returning to employment. Sanctuary policies then protect the unauthorized labor supply that keeps wages down.
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This is not a coherent defense of workers. It is a coalition strategy.
The modern left protects the professional class that staffs its institutions and the immigrant constituencies it hopes to mobilize. The blue-collar Americans who once formed the Democratic base receive speeches about dignity while policy steadily erodes their bargaining power.
Long gone are the days when the left at least pretended to organize politics around the American worker.
AI may indeed disrupt employment. Illegal immigration can also depress wages and displace workers. A party genuinely committed to labor would confront both pressures honestly instead of treating one as a crisis and the other as a moral obligation.
The left has built a bifurcated economy because it has bifurcated loyalties. Neither side of that arrangement puts America’s working class first.
At least one sheriff in New York state is pushing back against a new law forcing law enforcement agencies to stop cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James issued an order on July 24 requiring 12 local law enforcement agencies to terminate their agreements with ICE.
'All I can say about immigration-related issues is that if there is a very dangerous person in this jail, and the expectation is that I'm going to release that person back out into the community, I'm not doing that.'
Broome County Sheriff Fred Akshar excoriated the order in a media briefing where he called politicians in the state capital hypocrites.
“It is becoming increasingly ... frustrating, you know, to listen to the edicts and, you know, the white noise coming from, again, the political class in Albany,” Akshar said. “I would like to think that the vast majority of New Yorkers understand that the political class in Albany continues to destroy the great state of New York.”
Akshar said he would have to comply with the law ending 287(g) programs in the state by Aug. 25 but indicated that he would continue to cooperate with ICE in other ways.
"And you have policy after policy after policy as it pertains to public safety that continues to put criminals over law-abiding New Yorkers," he added. "And that is frustrating. So the reality is this: Whether or not I agree or disagree with a law that has been authored by the legislature and signed by the governor, my responsibility is to enforce the law."
"All I can say about immigration-related issues is that if there is a very dangerous person in this jail, and the expectation is that I'm going to release that person back out into the community, I'm not doing that," he added.
Broome County is located in the Southern Tier of the state and includes about 195,000 residents.
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Thousands of migrants stormed the border into the small Spanish territory of Cueta from Morocco, leading authorities to order the military to restore order.
Videos on social media show the migrants streaming across the border in the territory located in the northernmost tip of Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain.
'It's not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing.'
Rachid Sbihi, a representative of Cueta border officers, told the Associated Press that the border had "totally collapsed" under the onslaught.
"The situation is absolute chaos," he added. "It's not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing."
The government indicated that nine bodies of people who died trying to make the crossing were recovered. Local authorities said that dozens have died this year trying to reach Cueta.
Spain's Interior Ministry said that Moroccan officials were "closely cooperating" with Spain to bring order to the border and to secure "the return, as soon as possible, of all the people who entered Ceuta illegally."
The mass invasion might be due to a recent Spanish Supreme Court decision that found migrants who arrived in Spain by sea could not be immediately deported without due process — unlike those who crossed by land.
Juan Jesús Vivas, the head of the regional government in Ceuta, had warned Spanish authorities that they were being overwhelmed with migrants and called for a national emergency to be declared.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni decried the breach and threatened to shut down an immigration agreement with Spain in order to defend her country's sovereignty.
"The images coming from Ceuta are shocking and demonstrate, once again, that uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a real threat to the security of Europe's borders," she said in a post on social media translated from Italian.
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"Italy will not stand idly by. We are convening the relevant bodies, and following these meetings, we are prepared to take action," she added. "We will not yield an inch on the issue of illegal immigration."
BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre put the invasion into historical perspective.
"After a brutal civil war and decades of rule under Francisco Franco, the communists still managed to remerge and open the floodgates to destroy Spain," he wrote. "This is why they banned 'Camp of the Saints,' because it accurately portrayed the future communists wanted for the West."
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President Donald Trump says thousands of illegal alien truck drivers put Americans at risk on U.S. highways — but he has a solution.
Trump spoke at the White House on Thursday, providing plenty of context for his new program that hopes to encourage former military members to get back on the road.
'They don't speak the language for the most part. ... They don't want to learn the language.'
The president cited tens of thousands of illegal commercial driver's licenses being distributed across the United States, which have resulted in the deaths of Americans in recent months.
One such case of an Indian truck driver, who is an illegal immigrant, was directly criticized by Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who took the state of California to task over the alien's ability to get a CDL.
"For many years, American highways and roadways have been terrorized by unqualified illegal aliens dangerously driving big rigs," Trump said from the podium.
"They don't speak the language for the most part. Many of these illegal aliens don't even come close. They don't want to learn the language," he added.
Trump then announced a new pathway for American veterans to replace the illegal truckers who are taking up space on the road. The government program is titled Freedom Haulers, and it will fast-track the licensing of veterans who have experience with air brakes, trailers, and the like from their time in the military.
"We want veterans to take the wheel of big rigs and secure the economic supply lines of the country you swore to defend," the federal website reads.
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The program promises up to 100% of tuition coverage for approved CDL programs that can result in annual salary of $70,000 for truckers.
The administration also stated that after annual earnings of truckers were down 3% under President Joe Biden, they have risen by 7.42% under Trump, which will provide great opportunity for the 25% of military veterans who are truckers.
"Any American who has driven a heavy truck for our military will automatically be eligible for a commercial driver's license. ... We're going to make it as easy as possible for the veterans," the commander in chief explained.
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The president also claimed that federal authorities had "already removed more than 24,000 non-English speakers from behind the wheel."
"We've also forced states to cancel more than 28,000 commercial driver's licenses unlawfully issued to illegal aliens. They were given illegally," Trump added.
Secretary Duffy firmly stated on Thursday, "Illegal alien truckers are OUT, and American Veterans are IN."
"Thank you, [President Trump,] for putting OUR safety first," Duffy added.
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"Have you ever been to the U.S.-Mexico border?”
“No.”
One word. That may have been the most revealing moment of New York City Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent interview with the New York Times.
Sanctuary policies are easy to defend from a podium at New York City Hall. They are much harder to defend before communities that have already paid the price.
Mamdani defended his city’s sanctuary policies, which he reinforced after taking office by signing an executive order reaffirming them.
The problem is not so much that Mamdani has never visited the border. It is that he seems unwilling to understand why communities that lived through the border crisis reached a very different conclusion.
That lesson is visible far beyond the Rio Grande.
Consider Goliad County in South Texas. The rural county has about 7,000 residents and sits roughly 160 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Sheriff Roy Boyd described how the crisis transformed the community he serves.
Boyd’s office averaged 77 arrests a year during the five years before 2021. From 2021 through 2024, that average jumped to 413. Deputies discovered 16 cartel stash houses, and pursuits involving suspected human smugglers became routine.
Residents began hearing voices and movement on remote properties after dark. Many no longer felt safe alone in their own homes.
Those facts expose what Mamdani’s answer overlooks. The border crisis did not remain at the border. Cartel activity and illegal immigration reached inland communities that lacked the personnel and equipment to confront them. Former Border Patrol agent and Texas Public Policy Foundation senior fellow Ammon Blair calls cartels “hybrid threats.”
As Blair puts it, “Cartels don’t just smuggle. They destabilize.” Boyd has described them as “contractors and subcontractors” in a network moving migrants and drugs from the border into Texas’ largest cities.
That reality changed Texas’ response. In 2021, as illegal crossings surged under President Joe Biden, Goliad became one of the first inland counties to declare a local disaster. Boyd suggested giving local law-enforcement agencies flexible grants for overtime, new officers, patrol vehicles, and other equipment.
Those grants became part of Operation Lone Star.
According to Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, Operation Lone Star has produced more than 535,700 apprehensions and referrals, 57,400 criminal arrests, and 47,500 felony charges. Texas law enforcement has also intercepted more than 779 million lethal doses of fentanyl.
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Boyd later launched the Operation Lone Star Task Force, which allows local agencies to share deputies, intelligence, and resources across jurisdictional lines while targeting human smuggling, cartel activity, and organized crime.
New York has felt the downstream effects too. Former Mayor Eric Adams warned that the migrant crisis would “destroy New York City.” Mamdani nevertheless continues to defend sanctuary policies that impede cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Goliad’s experience carries a national lesson. Criminal organizations do not recognize state boundaries. The same networks that move people across the border traffic drugs, weapons, and money into communities nationwide. They exploit ports of entry, the northern border, and weaknesses far from either frontier.
The farther those networks spread, the more Americans discover that border security is not someone else’s problem.
Mamdani may be proud of New York City’s sanctuary stance.
His one-word answer showed more than where he has never been. It revealed what he refuses to see.
Sanctuary policies are easy to defend from a podium at city hall. They are much harder to defend before communities that have already paid the price.
Ben & Jerry’s may have built its brand on ice cream, but these days, you wouldn’t even know the company sells ice cream by looking at its social media feeds.
The Vermont-based company is releasing videos attacking ICE, criticizing immigration enforcement, and championing progressive causes — as if customers asked for a dousing of political lectures with their ice cream. And the messaging has become so incessant that even the parent company is pushing back on the brand’s aggressive activism.
“Now, a lot of companies have dialed back, but not the biggest culprit: Ben & Jerry’s. Ben & Jerry’s actually has been not just not dialing it down, but ramping it up lately,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says, before playing a video the company posted attacking ICE.
“Let’s break the ice,” the video begins. “Congress just voted to spend 70 billion of our tax dollars to fully fund ICE and Border Patrol through 2029 with no oversight, no accountability, and no restrictions. At the same time, ICE continues to detain people at a staggering rate, holding at least 60,000 people in inhumane detention centers with plans to deport them to countries most of them have never stepped foot in before.”
“People from all walks of life — grandparents, kids, pregnant women — are being taken from their neighborhoods, locked up in awful conditions, and denied basic care. Almost 50 people have died since January 2025, and the administration has blocked members of Congress from visiting these facilities multiple times, despite Congress’ legal right to do so,” it continued.
“Our tax dollars are supporting this abuse of power. People are being stripped of their rights and denied their dignity. Federal agents hide behind masks and closed doors. We need eyes on ICE detention centers now.”
“First of all, I’m going to need you to show your work,” Gonzales scoffs. “Second of all, nobody follows Ben & Jerry's for that.”
The company also used its Twitter account to “simp for the illegal who tried running ICE agents down with his car.”
“I could go on and on,” Gonzales says, adding that the company also has posted ads celebrating transgenders in women’s sports and has been encouraging No Kings protests.
“Apparently they even created a new flavor to imply that President Trump is an authoritarian,” she continues.
“Just sell the ice cream,” she adds.
And Gonzales might just get what she wants, as the company's political activism may be coming to a screeching halt.
“Ben & Jerry’s is actually owned by Magnum. And years ago when the company was sold, Ben and Jerry put in a board to ensure that they could keep pushing their woke messaging, but Magnum is like, ‘Nah, no thanks. Pass,’” Gonzales explains, playing a video Ben of Ben & Jerry’s put out complaining about receiving pushback from the parent company for the messaging.
“Maybe instead of focusing on Donald Trump being a made-up king, it sounds like you guys have some kings in your midst,” she adds.
To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
'Citizenship is not a commodity to be acquired through calculated exploitation and evasion of the immigration laws, such as by entering the United States on a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth within the Nation’s borders.'
The invasion of Ceuta, Spain, by Moroccans was a state-on-state conflict. In America, the enemy is within.
The invasion of Ceuta is just a snapshot of what Democrats will do with America's border next time they get power.
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