Gov. Maura Healey is desperately trying to rewrite history on the $1 billion a year migrant crisis, hoping to stave off a potent election year issue which threatens her attempt at a second term.

Healey has the monumental task of trying to squirm out from under the problem, coming up with a whole new narrative to cover her ineptitude and errors in how she initially dealt with the crisis.

She obviously realizes what a crushing issue it could be for her reelection next year, so is now claiming she “inherited” the migrant problem from the Biden administration and is asserting Massachusetts is not a sanctuary state.

After being sharply criticized by Republicans running for the Corner Office, Healey is trying to flip the narrative, saying she’s the one who straightened out the mess.

Will voters buy it? Probably not. But Healey is in political mode now, where she is at her best. She’s been a disappointing governor but is a great campaigner.

“This is a crisis that I inherited when I became governor and started in 2023,” she claimed in a televised “On the Record” interview this year. “We’ve worked really hard and I’ve taken a number of steps to actually reform the way the system operates and make changes.”

That claim went unchallenged in the interview.

She repeated that story when interviewed by the New York Times.

“It’s been a challenging situation, to say the least,” Healey said. “And my frustration has been, you know, as a state governor, I am inheriting the problems caused by federal inaction.”

Asked in the TV interview about the $1 billion a year the state has been spending for the emergency hotel shelters, she said “We’re on track to reduce that. We’re also on track to close all hotels. They were hotels that were operating when I became governor.”

Healey’s claim about inheriting the problem is ludicrous and not believable.

It is true that late in 2022, under Gov. Charlie Baker, the migrant crisis was just starting, with about 3,000 families in the shelter system. But that number doubled in 2023 and 2024 while Healey was governor.

Even before she became governor, Attorney General Healey opposed a Trump administration rule that would bar access to the asylum process for thousands of migrants.

“The Trump administration has done everything possible to deny access to asylum and make life miserable for people seeking refuge in the United States,” she said.

In her 2022 campaign, she expressed support for migrants and hired a self-described undocumented immigrant as deputy political director.

In her first year as governor, she set up “family welcome centers” for migrants, gave them drivers’ licenses, pushed for work permits and urged residents to take them into their homes.

“Our administration has been working hard to meet this unprecedented need and use every resource at our disposal to help families,” she said in June 2023.

It wasn’t until August 2023 that she declared an emergency over the surge in migrants.

But even then, she said migrants were only coming here because it’s “too dangerous to stay” in their home countries.

“They’re here because Massachusetts has and will always be a beacon of hope, compassion, humanity and opportunity,” she said.

Her administration opened dozens of hotel shelters and put thousands of migrants there. At one point late in 2023, more than 100 hotels were being used as shelters.

She also infamously placed migrants at the Melnea Cass recreation center in Roxbury over the strong objections of local residents who used it, a move that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu allowed and stood weakly by without stopping.

It was only in May 2025 that Healey declared hotels were no place to raise a family and began a plan to close them – more than two years after she became governor.

And it was only in January 2025 that Healey ordered an inspection of all state run emergency shelters and a “full review” of the intake process after a Dominican migrant was arrested at a shelter in Revere allegedly possessing an AR-15 and $1 million worth of fentanyl.

“It’s outrageous that this individual took advantage of our shelter system to engage in criminal activity,” she said in a statement to the Herald.

Healey also claimed last year that everyone who enters the state run shelters is “vetted.” This came after a Haitian national was charged with raping a 15-year-old migrants girl at a Rockland shelter.

What about the two years that went by when Healey was governor and did nothing to stop the criminal activity in the shelters, which was well documented? Her administration failed to do background checks, allowing the problem.

Healey in fact went to great lengths to protect migrants living here illegally, doubling down on Democrats’ plans to fight mass deportations.

“The key here is that every tool in the toolbox has got to be used to protect our citizens, to protect our residents,” Healey told MSNBC last December after Trump vowed to start deporting illegal immigrants when he took office.

Now Healey is being non-transparent about where the migrants living in the hotels are going to go. Where are all these people going exactly? No one will say. Also left unclear is how the state will handle the long term leases the administration signed with the hotels.

Healey also conveniently neglects to mention the scores of no-bid contracts her administration handed out to pay for the hotel shelters and house and feed the migrants.

The state commandeered the Melnea Cass Recreational Complex in Roxbury to house migrants last year, displacing local youth programs. (Herald file)

Former President Joe Biden (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)