New Campaign: Tell Massport to Stop ICE Flights

On December 12, Governor Maura Healey wrote to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE leadership denouncing the use of private charter flights at Hanscom Field to remove Massachusetts residents from the state.

The letter came after months of organizing, research, and sustained pressure from Lexington Alarm and other groups north and west of Boston who founded DE-ICE Hanscom, began weekly standouts at the entrance of the airport, and began a letter campaign to Governor Healey and Massport.

In her letter, Governor Healey wrote that ICE is using chartered aircraft at Hanscom to “quickly remove residents and sever them from their family, friends, and counsel without due process of law.” She emphasized that many of the people being detained and flown out of Massachusetts have no criminal convictions or charges, and that many are in the middle of lawful immigration processes through Massachusetts courts. She concluded “This is not the justice we believe in or stand for in Massachusetts. This practice must stop.”

Learn your local resistance history and celebrate modern patriotic resistance while having fun and doing good work at Lexington’s Annual Reenactment of the town’s historic Dec. 13, 1773 Tea Burning. The Lexington Visitor’s Center, Lexington Historical Society and the Lexington Minute Men invite all to participate in activities beginning at 10:00 a.m. at the Visitor’s Center.

There’ll be recreations of a soldier encampment, musket drills,18th-century cooking demonstrations, parades and music, all culminating in the burning of tea at 1:30 p.m.

Lexington Alarm!’s Reverse Tea Party fundraising event to support local food banks will be happening from 12:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. We will be in Depot Square…

Alex Pretti, a 37 year old nurse known by neighbors as an amiable man in his neighborhood was murdered by federal ICE agents today in Minneapolis.

Alex was not the target of any investigation. He was using his iphone to film the violent threats of ICE agents in the street, and he was talking to another woman filming the scene. ICE agents approached him and the woman, wrestled him to the ground, and after he had been subdued one agent took out a gun and fired up to ten shots killing him. His last words, to the woman who was pinned to the ground near him as they were pepper sprayed, were “all you alright?”

We are at war. No sense mincing words. Until we tear the present DHS agency down to the ground and start with a new structure, no one in America is safe.

A coalition of immigrant rights organizations, legislators, union leaders, and concerned citizens gathered outside Boston’s Statehouse on Oct. 22 to launch Protecting Massachusetts Communities (PMC) — a campaign to legally defend against the freedom of ICE agents to target, hunt down, arrest and deport the thousands of immigrants and refugees living and working in our communities.

“Operation Patriot,” the federal government’s escalation of immigrant deportations from Massachusetts last spring netted 1,500 arrests in May alone, mostly in the Boston “sanctuary city” area.”Operation Patriot 2.0”, which began in September, has yielded another 1,500 arrests is ongoing.

ICE’s growing use of violence in abducting immigrants spreads a constant fear in their homes and work places, not only in metropolitan Boston and its suburbs but also in Worcester, Lowell, Fall River, Framingham and Nantucket. Currently, the operations are reported to be moving into the Merrimack Valley region. Immigrants are afraid to take public transportation, go to work or send their children to school for fear of being trapped in a massive ICE dragnet based on racial profiling, now encouraged by the Supreme Court.

Contrary to federal claims of targeting only hardcore criminals, up to 80% of those indiscriminately scooped up, detained, stripped of their rights and deported are found to have no criminal record.

The recent letter from Maura Healey demanding that ICE halt flights out of Hanscom and the Boston Globe article examining ICE flights from Hanscom Field was the result of months of organizing, research, and coalition-building by Lexington Alarm and allied groups across the region. Far from being a sudden media moment, the story reflected a growing public effort to bring transparency and accountability to the use of a Massachusetts state facility for immigration enforcement operations.

The issue first gained momentum after a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Massport had knowledge of ICE-related charter flights at Hanscom but was not fully sharing that information with the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission. This lack of disclosure raised the possibility that Massport was deliberately keeping information about ICE flights from the Commission.

In response to the Commission’s request for this data and our desire to increase public scrutiny, Lexington Alarm and partner organizations launched a coordinated letter-writing campaign directed at Massport executives, the Massport Board of Directors, and Governor Maura Healey. To make participation easy and accessible, we developed an online tool that allows individuals to send letters directly to Massport and the Governor both electronically and via regular mail.

As of this week over six hundreds of letters and emails were sent. This response demonstrated that concern about ICE flights from Hanscom extended well beyond Lexington and involved residents across multiple communities.

A new federal rule, OMB 0034-2026, hands the White House direct political control over every federal research grant. Buried in dull bureaucratic language, it lets the Office of Management and Budget—now run by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought—override the individual agencies that have always tailored their own grant processes. Its core move, Section 200.205, installs presidential appointees inside every agency with sole authority to approve or deny grants. Peer review by working scientists still happens, but its verdicts become merely advisory—and appointees are actually pressured to reject the proposals experts rate highest. Grants must align with administration priorities, can be killed at any time on a whim, and are barred from researchers tied to advocacy groups, foreign collaborators, or public communication. The OMB actuaries no longer just audit; they command. It is a unitary seizure of power over American science, the very basis of our prosperity and standard of living, and the time to fight it is now through public comments