2 weeks Ago
ICE gets iced by LowellIMMIGRATION AND Customs Enforcement agents rolled into the Mill City on March 19 in an armored tactical vehicle accompanied by armed agents decked out in camouflage uniforms sporting balaclavas. The militaristic approach was at odds with Lowell’s urban setting.Last week, The Sun ran a story in which witnesses reported that an armored vehicle, seemingly accompanied by a pickup truck with Virginia license plates, was parked at the U.
S. Post Office on Father Morissette Boulevard early Wednesday afternoon. Photos of the vehicle showed “Department of Homeland Security” written on its driver’s door, while the side displayed markings for ICE, and the labels “Special Response Team” and “Police” on its rear doors.
The license plate was identified as “U.S. Government” with “DHS” printed on it.
ICE, operating under DHS, is responsible for enforcing immigration laws. While the agency did not initially provide specific details about its presence in Lowell last Wednesday, its activities often involve apprehending individuals as part of immigration enforcement efforts. It was later revealed that at least one arrest was made in Lowell — of a man wanted for homicide in his home country — as part of a weeklong operation that netted 370 arrests around the state.
During the course of their visit to the city, the raiding team apparently went to the wrong Canal Place building.A resident of a downtown neighborhood association that met last Monday updated The Sun on the ICE action that came to their Market Street building.“Compliments of the USPS, all three condo buildings in our complex have the same address, so anyone relying on GPS generally gets confused,” the resident said by email.
“They were directed to Canal Place 3.”According to this witness, ICE had a photo of a couple they were looking for, but the person in the condo where they thought the couple lived said it was wrong and she had never heard of them. ICE left and apparently were later seen at the Target parking lot on Plain Street.
If they weren’t so lethally fitted out, this initial Lowell “crackdown” hinted at a modern-day variation of Keystone Cops. Illegal immigration is a serious issue, but bringing firepower to a residential building with incomplete and erroneous information could have led to a tragic and irrevocable disaster.The 200 Market St.
complex is also home to Councilor Wayne Jenness, who did not respond to a request for comment on the immigration enforcement action in not only his building, but his Downtown Lowell district.Let’s hope that Lowell’s governing powers — City Manager Tom Golden, Lowell Police Superintendent Greg Hudon and the City Council — register their alarm at DHS’s potentially deadly incompetence in our fair city with our state and federal representatives.Trump administration cuts MVFB fundingLAST WEDNESDAY, The Sun wrote about $1 billion in cuts to food assistance programs that cut expected grant funding to the Merrimack Valley Food Bank, a food distribution hub on Middlesex Street in Lowell’s Highlands neighborhood.
The cuts to hunger relief programs just keep coming. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture Northeast Regional Office confirmed to the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that Massachusetts’ $3.4 million allocation from the Emergency Food Assistance Program Commodity Credit Corporation bonus food order has been canceled.That funding would have provided 121,830 cases of preselected food items such as eggs, chicken, milk, fruit, pasta, beans and fish products to Massachusetts food banks to help feed residents.
DESE also recently received notice from the USDA that the fiscal 2025 Patrick Leahy Farm to School State Agency Grant Program has been canceled. DESE had applied for $384,446 in funding for the grant. No reason for the cancelation was provided.
These significant cuts to promised funding for food programs will further weaken MVFB’s ability to address the deepening hunger crisis in the Merrimack Valley.“These cancelled future food deliveries include basic staples such as eggs, pork chops, and chicken breasts,” MVFB Director of Communications & Public Relations Kelly Proulx said on Friday. “Our organization, like many nonprofits, operates on a tight budget – we don’t have an extra $208,000 in our budget to purchase food to make up for these deliveries we will no longer be receiving.
“These cuts don’t just exist on paper or in a spreadsheet – they are taking food, including essential proteins, directly off the plates of families in Massachusetts who rely on food pantries for a little extra help to make ends meet,” Proulx continued. “We will continue working tirelessly to meet the needs of the people we serve, but this makes our work even more challenging.”Tributes to Arty TingasTHE MEMORIALS continue to grow outside the entrance to the now-closed Olympia Restaurant on Market Street to co-owner Arty Tingas, who died March 9.
The family-owned and operated business was a fixture in the Acre for more than seven decades.There’s no word on the disposition of the property, but the City Council discussed at a February meeting — perhaps facetiously — whether the building should be razed and turned into a parking lot to alleviate the parking congestion at the Lowell Police Department off Arcand Drive.Given the closing, the adjacent Zorba Music Hall was pulled from the venue list of The Town and The City Festival scheduled for Thursday, April 24 through Saturday, April 26.
Instead, Taffeta at Western Avenue Studios will host the Thursday kickoff concert featuring the three indie rock acts of Lady Lamb, Ezra Furman, and Class President.The sixth annual The Town and The City Festival takes place in event spaces, bars, cafes, and galleries throughout Downtown Lowell. The festival celebrates the spirit of Jack Kerouac and is named after his earliest novel which was primarily set in his hometown.
Single-day passes priced at $40 and individual show tickets are on sale at TheTownandtheCityFestival.com.Royal TheaterAS THE future of the Olympia building hangs in the balance, one block away, construction is well underway to convert the former Royal Theater on Merrimack Street into 17 units of market-rate apartments, along with a commercial space for Sophia’s Greek Pantry on the ground level.
Sophia’s currently sits adjacent to the now-closed Olympia.Developer Patrick Tighe, a Los Angeles-based architect who was born and raised in Lowell, received $200,000 in Community Preservation Act money and a $500,000 grant from the Healey-Driscoll administration’s Underutilized Properties Program through the One Stop for Growth awards.The building is scheduled to finish construction by the end of 2025.
Gendron announces candidacy for District 3 seatBELVIDERE RESIDENT Erin Gendron is the latest candidate to let The Sun know of her candidacy for the District 3 seat on the Lowell City Council currently held by Councilor Corey Belanger.She joins Belinda Juran, who announced in January.Gendron currently works for the state in the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, ensuring fair and equitable licensing practices.
Prior to this role, Gendron served for 10 years as a social worker with the Department of Children and Families, and Merrimack Valley Elder Services, working to protect the community’s most vulnerable residents.Gendron also serves as a member of the city’s Board of Health. She said in a statement that she will be a “strong voice to the City Council,” and her campaign will focus on key issues such as expanding opportunities for children and families, growing the Downtown Lowell economy, ensuring comfortable and safe neighborhoods, and fostering community engagement.
For more information, go to Erin-Gendron.com.A ballot question in ChelmsfordTHE TOWN of Chelmsford will go to the ballot Tuesday for their local elections with the School Committee and Housing Authority having the only contested seats.
The voters will also have a chance to weigh in on revisiting the town’s prohibition of marijuana retailers.The nonbinding ballot question reads: “Shall the Town of Chelmsford amend its zoning and general bylaws to allow for the retail sale and delivery of recreational marijuana?”Chelmsford obviously is among the slowly shrinking number of towns with a prohibition on retail marijuana establishments. Almost seven years after the first retail shops started opening across the state, perhaps Chelmsford residents could change their minds.
A positive vote on the ballot question would not suddenly allow for retail marijuana in Chelmsford, but Town Manager Paul Cohen said in a text Friday it would prompt the creation of such zoning provisions to be presented to Town Meeting this fall, where a subsequent positive vote would carry weight.This comes at an interesting time for the semi-legal industry in Massachusetts. Retail cannabis prices have fallen dramatically from their early highs, which is good for the consumer, but also puts a strain on businesses in a state where the market quickly became oversaturated.
Some companies may be waiting in the wings for Chelmsford to change its mind, and the town would benefit from whatever taxes could be raised from retail cannabis, but is it too late for towns like Chelmsford and Tewksbury to benefit fully from the same gold rush other communities jumped into from the start?Hot mic momentTEWKSBURY VOTERS will also head to the polls for the April 5 town election, with the most notable race being the two Select Board seats being sought by four candidates: incumbent Mark Kratman, Ryan Lloyd, Rich Russo and Lindsey Dunleavy-Tosto.While the rest of the world has been rightfully paying a great deal of attention to the colossal intelligence breach of top defense and intelligence officials adding The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat, the Select Board race in Tewksbury had its own little case of statements being made with an unknown audience.As an aside, I am extremely jealous of Mr.
Goldberg. Why couldn’t it be me?Russo appeared on Monday’s early morning taping of “City Life,” and before the show properly began, he was having a chat with Tom Bomil, who had less-than-kind things to say about Tewksbury Town Manager John Curran. Russo said he has had personally pleasant conversations with Curran to this point.
“But, he knows my position on certain things, and as do I with him. He might be a short-timer,” said Russo.Russo then went on to say he thinks of himself as a favorite in this race with Kratman, whom he compared with President Trump, in part because of the unsuccessful challenge to his nomination signatures.
“He really is like the microcosm of Trump. Try to throw him off the ballot, try to throw him in jail,” said Russo.This audio was uploaded along with the rest of the episode, before it was taken down and reuploaded without the hot mic moment.
Whoops.Russo acknowledged everything in a Facebook post Tuesday.“Well.
.. I Guess the Mic Was On! Looks like my off-the-air remarks made their way onto the airwaves.
No surprises here—I’ve always been direct, I’ve always been honest, and I’ve always been focused on what’s best for Tewksbury. That’s what leadership is all about,” said Russo in the post. “But let’s focus on what really matters: The future of our town.
Strong leadership means tackling real issues—fiscal responsibility, smart growth, supporting first responders, and investing in infrastructure. That’s why I’m running for Select Board—to bring action-oriented solutions and real results, not political games from anonymous keyboard warriors.”So, perhaps there is a little bit at stake for Tewksbury this election, but it is possible that everyone is able to work together regardless of the outcome.
If not, Greater Lowell risks yet another game of musical chairs: town manager edition.Prove itPEOPLE WHO come to this country illegally and commit serious crimes need to be addressed. I’ll concede this, because it does happen, and it would be foolish to pretend it doesn’t or that it is not a problem to a degree.
The problem I am having with how this issue is currently being approached is a rather predictable one to anybody who hasn’t buried their heads in the sand over the last decade. Donald Trump and his sycophants have spent the entirety of that time building on hateful rhetoric, dehumanizing groups of people they do not like and threatening anybody and anything who espouses speech they do not approve of, First Amendment be damned.So when I see the administration targeting legal immigrants who have committed no crimes but “thought crimes,” and bragging about how they will deport anybody here otherwise legally for having the wrong opinion, I feel dread, but not an ounce of shock.
To this point, the most high profile of these attempted deportations have been of students here on legal visas who publicly spoke out against U.S. support for the war in Gaza.
One such graduate student, Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University, was taken from our backyard in Somerville a week ago, and to this point the Trump administration has done basically nothing to prove she did anything to support Hamas or any terrorist organization.Reading the op-ed Ozturk and other students wrote last year for The Tufts Daily, one can reasonably disagree with their arguments or the points they made. That’s fine, even if I would call the Israel/Palestine situation far more nuanced than either side of the issue seems willing to admit, because they absolutely have that right.
But to say there was support of a terrorist organization in that article is simply delusional, and to deport somebody over it is sickening.The Constitution applies to everybody within the borders of the United States, citizen or immigrant. We cannot go down the slippery slope of the executive branch deciding what is good speech and what is bad speech, nor can we allow the government to decide to whom the Constitution applies and when it can ignore due process for people it hates.
If basic empathy or understanding the Constitution isn’t your thing, there is a pragmatic reason due process applies to everybody: because if it has to apply to every single person, you never have to worry about if the government decides it does not apply to you.I’ve listened to so many on the political right voice their deep distrust with the government over the years, but now, just because the government promises to hurt the right people, they trust without evidence that the people being disappeared are who the government says they are. If the Trump administration wants us to believe Ozturk deserves to be removed from the U.
S., we are going to need a lot more than what amounts to “because I said so.”Otherwise, if they can do this to her, they can do this to you.
Dracut selectmen pass leadership testWHEN DRACUT Town Manager Kate Hodges first introduced the topic of trash fees at the Board of Selectmen’s March 11 meeting, it would have been reasonable to predict a split vote on either side of the issue.Dracut, after all, has a history of aversion to increased fees and taxes. The trash fee proposal would add an altogether new fee to the mix.
Hodges, however, argued that the fee would be needed to balance the fiscal 2026 budget without relying exclusively on free cash to cover an $8 million deficit.Nor was it certain how the vote would go at the March 25 meeting, especially when Selectman Josh Taylor asked whether it was a decision for Town Meeting to make and not the board.But in the end, it was Taylor who made the motion to add trash fees as a source of revenue for the town.
Hodges was clear that, under Dracut’s charter, the town manager has the authority to set fees, but she wanted the selectmen’s endorsement to do so.The town charter calls for a town manager/board of selectmen to lead the town, she reminded them. Sending the question to Town Meeting would be an abdication of leadership, she suggested.
Not to mention — and she didn’t — with Dracut’s history of rejecting budget overrides and fee increases, Town Meeting might easily have rejected a trash proposal.“I know how hard this is going to be for you to decide. I know it would be easier to go to Town Meeting,” she said.
“You have to lead,” she told them.Without the trash fee, the town would be in the dangerous position of closing an $8 million deficit with cash reserves.In the end, Taylor said, “This won’t solve the problem,” suggesting more work needs to be done to support town services.
“I don’t like this fee at all,” Taylor said. “But I’ll put it forward. The numbers in this book (Hodges’ presentation) don’t lie.
I’ll make the motion.”State guidelines, in fact, emphasize that “communities limit their use of free cash to funding one-time expenditures (for example) capital projects, snow and ice deficits, or emergencies, or use it to fund other reserves. Further, we recommend defining a target balance for free cash certification as a percentage of the general fund budget, such as five to seven percent, and striving to keep a targeted year-end unappropriated free cash balance to fund the next certification.
”As presented, the trash fee will allow for abatements.This week’s Column was prepared by reporters Melanie Gilbert in Lowell; Peter Currier in Chelmsford, Tewksbury, and on Rumeysa Ozturk; and Prudence Brighton in Dracut..
