GBH News’ sagacious political reporter Adam Reilly is running down the big ways that the Trump administration and its decisions are intersecting with the politics and people of Massachusetts. Reilly joined GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz to share his analysis on last week’s developments. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Mark Herz: We’re going to dig in by starting with just over a month ago [when] President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan — incensed by what he called the refusal of local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities — issued this dramatic threat at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.

Tom Homan, pre-recorded: I read a story last night — the police commissioner of Boston: You said you doubled down on not helping the law enforcement office of ICE. I’m coming to Boston, I’m bringing hell with me.

Herz: So a couple of weeks after that, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu testified in front of Congress, and she accused Homan of misrepresenting how things actually work in Boston, saying that the city is on firm legal ground with its so-called “sanctuary” policies and that it doesn’t keep federal authorities from doing their jobs. That pushback was echoed by Gov. Maura Healey in a sit-down interview with the New York Times. And now Homan has revealed — after the fact, I note — that he did come to Boston. What did he do? What is he saying about his seemingly mysterious visit?

Reilly: Yeah, as this escalation, this “war of words” continues, Homan is now striking a pretty triumphal tone. He published a long post on X in which he said he came to Massachusetts. As you mentioned, he said he did this after the fact, that he came last week for a multiday operation involving a bunch of different federal agencies, including ICE, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals, and others. Homan said 370 illegal immigrants were arrested , and that a majority of them were “significant criminals, including murderers, drug traffickers, and child sexual predators.” And Homan added this at the end of his post: “President Trump’s all-of-government effort to arrest and remove the worst first that was capitalized is making our communities safer every day. President Trump is a game-changer who is keeping his promises to the American public. Much more to be done, but it will be done.”

Herz: OK, strong words there from border czar Tom Homan. He says a majority of the people arrested in this Massachusetts sweep, as you’re saying, were “significant criminals.” That’s a pretty broad term. Do we have any more definitive information on who these people were who arrested?

Reilly: We have some, thanks to a press release from ICE. ICE says that 205 of the people arrested had what they call “significant criminal convictions or charges,” which means, just to do some easy math here that doesn’t involve counting on my fingers, 165 of the others who were arrested did not have significant criminal conviction or charges. So you could frame it a bit differently and say that 45% of the total number of people arrested — nearly half — did not have “significant convictions or charges.” And that, if you put it in those terms, that, I think, raises real questions about the characterization of the Trump administration looking to take out the “worst first,” as Homan puts it.

Herz: So 45%. That’s pretty significant. I mean, so when he says a majority, he’s only gotten there by 5%.

Reilly: A scant majority, I think.

Herz: Do we know anything more about these 45%, what they’re arrested for?

Reilly: I have not been able to get comment from ICE on that. Maybe they’ll report back. If they do, we’ll share it next week who those people are.

But there is one other point I want to make about the people who were arrested: They were not limited to Boston proper or even the Greater Boston area. They were arrested all over the state. If you look through that ICE press release, you see communities like Boston mentioned, Medford, Wakefield, a bit closer in. But also places like Worcester, West Yarmouth, Pittsfield. So Homan and the Trump administration have been very, very focused on Boston and the idea of Boston as the sort of epicenter of lawlessness, but the reality of who they’re picking up is actually quite a bit more complicated.

Herz: Yeah, you’ve mentioned that Boston is even sort of like a favorite punching bag or it has been historically.

Reilly: Yeah, it’s almost got totemic value. It’s the archetype of how things are not supposed to be, according to Homan and his colleagues.

Herz: Right. And we’ve been talking about the breakdown of these people arrested. It’s great how you dug into this. And this big quote that you said from Homan — and that was in caps, the “WORST FiRST.” And of course, this brings to mind all morning, we’ve been talking Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying ... he’s yanked at least 300 visas of foreign students who are here because they “caused a ruckus” or harassed people. He says if you’re a student on a foreign visa, and you do things like this — we don’t have to keep you around. Boom: you’re out of here. We presume he’s gonna be yanking a lot more, but so going back to this “worst first,” thinking about what the secretary of state is saying, and knowing that this raises a lot of concerns for us locally. We’ve had some big cases.

“I’d urge everyone to follow these cases very closely and differentiate between them, because they are not all the same, they’re not created equal.”
Adam Reilly, GBH News political reporter

Reilly: Rubio is is making these comments in the context of explaining what happened to Rumeysa Ozturk, the doctoral student at Tufts from Turkey who was here on a legit student visa and was taken into custody by ICE agents this week, apparently for alleged support of Hamas and alleged causing of a ruckus, to listen to Rubio. Although we still haven’t heard what those offenses were, right?

We know that she co-authored this op-ed in the Tufts Daily , saying that the administration should take calls for divestment from Israel seriously. That much we know. Her friends have said that she was not particularly active in protests in other ways, shapes or forms. So I think it’s important for us to keep in mind that until we hear from the Trump administration, from Secretary of State Rubio, or anyone else, some specifics about what Rumeysa Ozturk allegedly did, take it with a grain of salt and be skeptical about it.

And I gotta say, just before we finish talking about her ... the video of Rumeysa Ozturk being taken into custody is really chilling. I think it’s something everyone should watch if they hadn’t. You see this woman on the street in Somerville. People come up to her wearing baseball caps with their faces covered. You hear her kind of screaming in panic. She’s taken away. It lasts about a minute. She was there and then she’s gone. It’s worth watching.

Reilly: But yes, we have reported at GBH, our colleague Sarah Betancourt, on a green card holder named Fabian Schmidt, originally from Germany, who was detained at Logan Airport a week ago, currently being held by ICE at a facility in Rhode Island. His mom says he was physically abused during that detention process. ICE disputes that. He has a misdemeanor marijuana charge that dates back to 2015, which apparently was dismissed under changes in California state law, but also may have missed a hearing involving that. So again, significantly harsh treatment of Fabian Schmidt for something that doesn’t necessarily seem to place him among the worst of the worst.

And we’re going to see more of this. As Tom Homan says, this is just getting started. So I’d urge everyone to follow these cases very closely and differentiate between them, because they are not all the same, they’re not created equal.