“From time to time things will happen.”

That was part of Gov. Maura Healey’s take on the March arrest of Cory Alvarez, a 26-year-old migrant from Haiti charged with raping a 15-year-old disabled girl at the Comfort Inn in Rockland, which had been converted into an emergency migrant shelter.

On Aug. 28, as the Herald reported, 18-year-old Haitian national Akim Marc Desire was arrested by Mansfield Police on a charge of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a release.

Desire reportedly entered the United States lawfully on June 4, 2023, but had since violated the terms of his lawful entry.

Things do happen, and they will continue to happen unless someone in a position of power does something to stop them.

These are not isolated incidents.

In June, the Herald learned that more than 20 people had been kicked out of the state’s emergency migrant-family shelter program in recent months for “inappropriate actions.”

The Herald obtained ejection letters from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities through a public records request after finding out that a 29-year-old man was reportedly booted from a hotel housing migrant families in Marlboro, as a 16-year-old girl staying at the hotel got a restraining order against him.

Of the 22 recent “separation from household” letters, 21 of them cited “inappropriate actions” in the migrant-family shelter program.

There was more to Healey’s comment on Alvarez. She told Boston 25 News in that same interview that “It’s a horrible situation. It’s a horrible allegation. My thoughts are with the victim and her family. I think we have the right systems in place. Unfortunately, this is a terrible incident.”

When terrible incidents continue to happen, Gov. Healey, it’s time to ask if we really have do have the right systems in place.

It’s also time to ask what you can do about it.

“We continue to call on the federal government and specifically Congress to act and fund what it needs to fund in terms of resources at the border,” Healey told CBS Boston in March.

Federal funding and Congressional action to address who is crossing the border and who should be deported is one thing, dealing with the fallout from criminal behavior from migrants who are already in the state is another.

Healey has made headlines for seeing problems and trying to fix them — at least those on the progressive agenda. She announced the largest offshore wind energy procurement in state history this week.

“You don’t have to look far to see the severe financial impacts of climate change, and the need to do the work to reduce emissions and bring cleaner energy online,” Healey told reporters at the State House. “We’ve got to do this.”

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You also don’t have to look far to see the impacts of criminal behavior by some migrants on the community — especially the migrant community sheltering with these alleged bad actors. The problem goes beyond assaults and “inappropriate” behaviors. ICE and ERO agents in Massachusetts have arrested illegal immigrants on charges of drug trafficking.

The “systems in place” are failing Massachusetts residents and migrants.  The time for action is now.

Editorial cartoon by Joe Heller (Joe Heller)