The real audience for the No Kings protest, and why you should go

On Saturday, March 28th, No Kings protests will be held across the country. In Boston, it’ll be 2PM to 4PM at the Boston Common.

You should go, and bring your friends. But not because Trump or Republicans will care who went to a protest in Boston. The audience for this protest is actually elected officials here in Massachusetts.

Unfortunately, Massachusetts officials continue to cooperate with ICE and share information with ICE, or simply do nothing when action is clearly necessary. They need to do better, and large-scale protests are a good way to push them in the right direction.

Let’s see some examples.

Governor Healey: Last one standing

Here’s an excerpt from a story in Bolts magazine:

Luis Perez waited 53 and a half years to be freed from prison. … He was 73 years old, a lifetime removed from the murder he committed as a teenager after moving from Cuba to Massachusetts. … Just prior to his release, Perez has gotten a glowing review from the state parole board, which, he says, unanimously supported him, and made him feel as though he’d cleared every possible hurdle to freedom and had nothing more to worry about. …

On his walk from the cell block to fresh air and freedom and family, he was ushered through a doorway, on the other side of which stood three men he’d never seen before: ICE officers. They handcuffed him and drove him in a van to a detention facility in Maine.

He spent 10 days in Maine, he said, before ICE put him on a plane bound for Texas, where he spent almost seven months in detention, before being ordered into a van that drove him, over three days and more than 1,000 miles, to Tabasco, Mexico, a place he’d never been before, and where he knew no one.

Why are Massachusetts prisoners being handed over to ICE? Why is Perez in Mexico, instead of living his last years out with his daughter, his original plan per the article?

Since 2007, the state prison system has participated in the federal 287(g) program and, as part of its contract, regularly sends people exiting Massachusetts prisons directly into ICE custody.

In fact, Massachusetts is the only state that voted against Donald Trump in 2024, and where the governor is a Democrat, where a state agency is contracting with the 287(g) program. It’s also the only state where Democrats fully control the state government that has such an agreement.

The Governor could cancel this agreement today, but refuses to do so. The legislature’s plan (still not passed! see below) doesn’t cancel this agreement either. Per the article, between 78 and 172 people get handed over by Massachusetts to ICE every year.

And yes, Gov Healey has done some things to protect people from ICE, but even that took a long time to happen. She is still very deliberately choosing to hand some people over, and plans to continue doing so.

So when the Governor speaks at the No Kings protest, claiming she’s fighting ICE at every turn, it’s important she see as many people as possible, and as many anti-ICE signs as possible. She needs to viscerally understand how unpopular ICE is with voters.

The legislature: Slower than molasses in February

In 2017, after Trump was first elected, a bill entitled An Act to protect the civil rights and safety of all Massachusetts residents was proposed to protect the due process rights of immigrants. The same bill was proposed in the next session, and the next, and the next.

As is traditional in our immensely ineffective legislature, it never passed. While theoretically a democracy, in practice the leaders of the state House and Senate are the ones who decide what legislation passes. And they didn’t like the bill, so it never passed.

After Trump’s election in November 2024, this bill was all ready to go, having been written many years earlier. The legislature did… nothing. Now, with ICE terrorizing the country for more than a year, they are finally voting on a law to protect immigrants from ICE. The State Senate, at least, wants to do something more than the State House has voted on. But that also means even more delays as they negotiate on the details. Neither would cancel existing 287(g) contracts.

Trump has been attacking immigrants since 2016. He won again in November 2024, and it was already clear then that this time was going to be much worse. 2025 proved that true. And the legislature still hasn’t finished a single bill to protect residents from ICE.

So they too need to see as many people as possible in the protest, so they understand how massively unpopular ICE is with voters.

Boston, Cambridge, and more: Sharing information with the Feds

Even as Mayor Wu of Boston takes some steps to protect Boston residents from ICE, she has also sought a $12 million Federal grant that requires 10% of money to be spent on coordination with ICE. She has also continued to have Boston participate in BRIC, local a data sharing system that allows the Federal government to target immigrant activists. As the article goes on to explain, :

Boston police share information with federal authorities including ICE through the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), which has been operating since 2003 and has been funded by the same Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grants that now require 10% of the funding be used for what federal authorities are calling “border crisis response enforcement.” …

Wu has spoken out against what many see as overreach by federal immigration authorities this year as Boston-area residents have been detained and deported in ICE raids. But BRIC has for years monitored and shared information with federal authorities on protest movements, including the 2011 local Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Dewey Square, the Black Lives Matter protests that gained steam after the 2014 Ferguson, Mo., police killing of Michael Brown, and the current demonstrations against Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza.

Muslim Justice League Executive Director Fatema Ahmad notes that under the current administration, multiple federal agencies — including the FBI — are now involved in civil immigration enforcement raids. Because Boston police file reports on nonviolent demonstrations through BRIC, the FBI and federal agencies have access to information on immigrant activists who may then be targeted for deportation.

In 2015 ACLU of Massachusetts found that BRIC had monitored peaceful protest, and in 2020 they showed its spending on surveillance.

Cambridge also participate in BRIC, as do Brookline, Chelsea, Everett, Quincy, Revere, Somerville, and Winthrop. So again, the more people they see at protests pushing back against ICE, the easier it will be fight against their continued information sharing with ICE.

Bonus reason: Why you should bring your friends

There’s research with really cool methodology showing that mass protests increase turnout in elections (this is one example, here’s another with a similar approach.) More voters makes a difference, especially in primaries and municipal elections. So bring your friends!

Again, it’s 2PM, Saturday March 28th at the Boston Common.

A bit more

Songs of the day: Things Ain’t Right by Queen Esther Marrow.