Gov. Maura Healey is better at flying illegal immigrants into Massachusetts than flying them out.

One only has to recall the hundreds of illegal immigrant families who were housed at Logan Airport in 2024 after arriving uninvited by planes, trains and automobiles to a welcoming Massachusetts.

Being in the county illegally—and already at the airport—they could have been flown back to where they came from.

So, it is no wonder why her letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and to Acting ICE Director Ed Lyons, “demanding” the end to using Hansom Air Base to fly them out ended up in the wastebasket.

There was also a time in 2024 when the governor used taxpayer funds ($750,000) to pay for billboards in Florida and Texas urging strangers to come to Massachusetts. The billboards read “Massachusetts: For Us All.” While it was aimed at gays, it was naturally interpreted to mean anyone.

Consequently, under President Joe Biden’s disastrous open border policy, which Healey supported, millions of unvetted immigrants from around the world flooded into the country and the state seeking sanctuary and free stuff. Support for them is costing Massachusetts taxpayers more than $1 billion a year.

Massachusetts is not officially a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants from around the world. It just acts like one.

It has been able to do that because Healey and the woke Democrats on Beacon Hill have been able to skirt the state’s decades old so-called “Right to Shelter Law” by parsing the intent.

The law (ACTS,1983, Chap, 450, Section 7) was passed to provide welfare assistance to homeless Massachusetts residents, not to people coming to the state seeking handouts.

The law says that “any such person who enters the Commonwealth solely for the purposes of obtaining benefits under this chapter shall not be considered a resident.”

That would seem to cover the thousands of illegal immigrants who flocked to Massachusetts seeking free housing, food, phones, medical care, schooling, security, transportation and so on.

However, the way the Healey administration and the Democrat Legislature got around the law was to call the illegal immigrants “residents” even though they were not.

In fact, in her letter to Trump officials condemning the “anti-American deportation tactics” at Hanscom, Healey referred to the illegal immigrants being deported as “residents.”

“As Governor,” Healey wrote, “I am writing t to demand that ICE immediately stop using Massachusetts airports and private jets to deport residents and obstruct due process, and to halt this practice across the country”

Yeah, right.

It is possible that Healey would have some clout with the Trump administration—for the good of Massachusetts– had she sought a White House meeting with Trump, instead of continuously attacking him. Trump meets with everybody.

But Healey is so embedded with Trump hatred that she cannot put policy above politics.

Policy would dictate that you get along with the president, no matter who he is, to benefit the people of the state you represent. Instead, the state suffers federal cutbacks, like federal money for two new needed Cape Cod bridges, while she “stands up” to Trump.

This now includes the Trump administration’s suspension of five offshore wind projects, including Vineyard Wind, a Healey initiative, being constructed off Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

It is fine that Healey talked to the media and said the suspension “made no sense” and would cost the state 4,000 jobs. But the media can’t bring back the wind energy project or the jobs. Only Trump can do that.

So, it is Trump she should be talking to.

That’s the way the wind blows.

Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas can be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com

President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
A sign points visitors to Hanscom Field Civil Air Terminal. (Matthew Healey/Boston Herald, File)

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