Press Release: Progressive Massachusetts is not affiliated with Massachusetts Progress Action

Progressive Massachusetts is not affiliated with Massachusetts Progress Action
August 31, 2026
For Immediate Release:  Boston, MA

Progressive Massachusetts, Inc., more commonly known as Progressive Mass, would like to clarify that our organization has no affiliation to or with Massachusetts Progress Action, Mass Progress Action, MA Progress Action, Advance Progress, or MA Advance Progress.

Progressive Mass finds it necessary to highlight the above distinction in an effort to protect our reputation, advocacy, and most importantly, our supporters. Any information, content, or other materials shared under the three names mentioned above is not being shared with our organization’s support nor does it represent our thoughts or opinions.

We feel that it is necessary to highlight the distinction because we want to ensure that there is no confusion due to the similarity of our names.

“Progressive Mass has, by a vote of our membership, endorsed Senator Markey in this race,” said Board President, Dan Cusher, “and we want to be certain that people know that we are not behind the ads supporting his opponent, as we go into the primary.”

Press Contact: 

Name: Dan Cusher
Phone: (508) 439-9376
Email: media@progressivemass.com

What Happened on the Last Day of the Formal Legislative Session?

July 31 is the last day of the formal legislative session for Beacon Hill. That typically produces a flurry of last-minute legislative activity, and it did–but with a twist.

Two years ago, when the sun rose on August 1, the Legislature was left without agreement on a number of key bills, with conference committees having yet to settle on final text. The Legislature got a lot of negative press for that, and deservedly so. However, they came back throughout the fall to finish the work.

Now, two years later, the two chambers again failed to come to agreement on a number of key bills. However, they blessed such procrastination in the rules they adopted last year, enabling themselves to more readily take up bills after July 31 so long as they are able to appoint the negotiators by then.

So what happened these final days?

  • The two chambers, as we wrote about here, sent a final version of the PROTECT Act to the Governor’s desk yesterday.
  • The Senate voted in a 15 to 4 standing vote (without formal record) for legislation previously passed by the House to expand abortion access and ensure that no one needs to leave the state to get essential reproductive health care after 24 weeks. The House voted 121 to 35 to enact the bill, as the two chambers sent it to the Governor.
  • The two chambers also finalized a bill to rein in politically motivated book bans, with the House voting 156 to 1. Republican John Gaskey of Carver was the only NO vote.

What is still in negotiations?

  • Comprehensive data privacy
  • Energy affordability
  • An economic development bill that contains key priorities like Clean Slate (automatic record sealing), Raise the Age, and the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA)
  • Ballot Spending Transparency Act
  • Environmental bond bill
  • A school cell phone ban and (together or separate) teen social media regulations
  • BRIGHT Act (higher ed infrastructure)

The Legislature also appointed conference committees today to work on bills expanding access to primary care and updating the public records law (but in a way less than this fall’s Question 1).

The Legislature is unlikely to do much work in August with vacations and looming elections, and they have until January 5 to finish their job. They shouldn’t wait.

We’re Now in the Last Week of the Formal Legislative Session. Here’s What That Means.

This week is the last week of the formal legislative session for Beacon Hill. Although the current session runs through January 5, 2027, the Legislature is not expected to be coming in for votes or committee work for the rest of the year.

Two years ago, at the end of the last legislative session, the Legislature ended up with a long list of unfinished business, as numerous conference committees tasked with negotiating final bill text were unable to come to agreements by July 31.

The Legislature got a lot of bad press for this — and rightfully so. Those bills were eventually finalized months later and signed into law, but the narrative of the session was set.

At the start of the legislative session, the Speaker and Senate President promised a more transparent and efficient legislative process.

We’re now in the final week of the session, and AGAIN, there’s a long list of unfinished business, as numerous conference committees tasked with negotiating final bill text (for things like the PROTECT Act, data privacy bill, energy affordability bill, and much more) have yet to come to an agreement.

But there’s a difference: the Legislature blessed this failure to finish on time in their new rules. As long as they can get negotiators appointed by Friday, they can keep negotiating until January 5, a long period of legislative limbo for our full-time legislature.

That means that there will still be need for legislative advocacy throughout the fall: to make sure that they finish bills and that the bills they finish are strong.

We’ll keep you posted about actions and opportunities to make sure your voice gets heard.

It’s the Last Month of the Formal Legislative Session. What’s Already Become Law?

As we head into the last month of the formal legislative session, let’s take stock.

During the 2025-2026 legislative session at the MA State House, 220 bills have been signed into law.

But of those 220….

  • 166 are home rule petitions about one city or town
  • 23 are administrative matters about sick leave for specific state or county employees
  • 12 are budgets or supplemental budgets
  • 4 are awareness days
  • 3 are routine bonding and financing matters (the timeline for bond issuance; Chapter 90 funding for local transportation projects)

So what about the other twelve?

Three of them will expire by next year, if not sooner:

  • Extending hybrid meeting access for public meetings through next June
  • Setting the primary date as September 1
  • Creating an opt-in, temporary municipal pilot program to extend last call until 3 am for the World Cup

So what are the other nine?

  • Strengthening protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care, a critical move in light of federal attacks (August 2025)
  • Making car rentals more affordable (November 2025)
  • Updating the collection of birth and death statistics (November 2025)
  • Protecting transit workers from assault (December 2025)
  • Reforming the Cannabis Control Commission (April 2026)
  • Updating outdated and offensive language in Massachusetts law related to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (June 2026)
  • Creating a statewide framework to help individuals with autism communicate important information to law enforcement officers during traffic stops and other interactions (June 2026)
  • Overhauling early literacy instruction (June 2026)
  • Creating a public online database and automated notification system tracking code violations related to welding, plasma cutting, and spark-producing construction (June 2026)

Various other policy changes have passed via the budget (e.g., banning tenant-paid broker’s fees, creating an immigrant legal defense fund), but the Legislature has increasingly used large, must-pass vehicles like the budget to pass policy rather than pass standalone bills with clear votes, accountability, and attribution of credit.

And there are many bills in Conference Committees existing or soon to be reformed.

The big takeaway of all of this should be clear: there’s a LOT for them to still do in this final month. And it’s important that our legislators hear from us about it.

50+ human rights groups sign letter opposing MA “age verification” bills, hold press conference at State House with Rep Mike Connolly

BOSTON, MA—A growing coalition of human rights, LGBTQ+, civil liberties, racial justice, and environmental advocacy groups will release a letter signed by more than 50 organizations on Wednesday, May 13th, expressing grave concern about dangerous and unconstitutional online ID check bills proposed by the Massachusetts House and Governor Maura Healey.

Leaders from organizations that signed the letter will hold a press conference in front of the State House at 10am on Wednesday, May 13th, urging the Governor and the House to work with experts and impacted communities to make significant changes to the legislation.

Signers of the letter, led by Fight for the Future, include the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, Sierra Club of MA, Partners in Sex Education, United American Indians of New England (UAINE), The Coalition for Student Mental Health, Progressive Massachusetts, Muslim Justice League, Mass 50501, Act On Mass, and dozens more. 

See a preview of the letter and current list of signers here: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-05-11-new-letter-massachusetts-social-media-ban-will-help-trump-and-will-not-keep-kids-safe-from-big-tech/

Rep. Mike Connolly, who voted against the House bill H.5366, will join advocates for the press conference. Advocates will hold signs, make short remarks, and take questions from the press before going into the State House to deliver the letter to House and Senate leadership as well as the Governor’s office. 

Fight for the Future has released a working draft proposal of an alternative model bill that would address Big Tech harms without undermining privacy or human rights. The group has met with Governor Healey and the Attorney General’s office after holding a protest outside the governor’s broadcast on WGBH last week. Fight for the Future director Evan Greer and Nathalie Marachél of Northeastern University penned an op-ed for the Boston Globe explaining the privacy, civil liberties, and free expression problems with the current legislation. 

Contact: Evan Greer, press@fightforthefuture.org or 978-852-6457, to RSVP for the press conference or arrange a separate interview. We will have photos and video available for press later in the day.

Members of the coalition have offered the following statements to press:

“Health education is built on the principle that young people are best protected not by cutting them off from information but by giving them the tools they need to navigate a complex world. We are especially concerned about LGBTQ+ teens, young people in abusive homes, and adolescents in mental health crises who rely on online communities for support they may not find anywhere else. This bill would put those young people at greater risk, not less. A real legislative response should focus on privacy protections and algorithmic accountability, not surveillance and restricted access to information. We urge Massachusetts lawmakers to scrap H. 5349 and pursue policy that is genuinely centered on the wellbeing of young people.” -Megara Bell, Director of Partners in Sex Education

“Mass 50501 stands firmly against handing our personal data to large tech companies — especially when they are so willing to share that data with our federal authoritarian government. We also stand with marginalized youth who often feel isolated until finding their communities online. It is true that social media can do harm, especially to the mental health of children. However, the way this bill is written will disproportionately affect LGBTQIA+, disabled and neurodivergent youth, while opening the door to surveillance overreach for all citizens of Massachusetts by for-profit tech companies. The problem is real, this solution is reckless, invasive, and puts the very people it claims to protect at greater risk.” – Rebecca Winter (she/her), Executive Director, Mass 50501

“The Intersex community is still so young that we don’t have accessible resources; and the sex and gender resources that do exist don’t know how to support us. Intersex youth and adults alike are totally dependent on social media for peer support, patient centered medical support and the lived experiences of our elders.” -Esther Morris Leidolf, President and Founder of MRKH Intersex

Online verification policies have proven to be a data privacy nightmare. Rather than reining in Big Tech, as legislators have portrayed the bill as doing, it expands new frontiers for them to profit from our data and puts marginalized communities at risk.” -Jonathan Cohn, Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts 

“We share the concern about young people’s wellbeing online, but this bill raises serious questions that lawmakers haven’t answered. Age verification means collecting government IDs and face scans — data that can be hacked, sold, or misused. The solution to protecting young people is not putting their private information at greater risk. It’s ensuring they have access to comprehensive sex education that builds the critical thinking and media literacy skills they need to navigate the digital world safely.” – Callie Simon (she/her), Executive Director, SIECUS

“As an organization grounded in the Unitarian Universalist faith, we oppose H.5366 as this bill directly threatens many of our UU principles including; ‘justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.’ This bill endangers the safety of our children and youth, puts them at risk, robs them of their right not to be surveilled, and in this way denies them the justice, equity, and compassion to live free from surveillance and censorship.” –Rev. Jo Murphy, UU Mass Action

“This House bill is in effect an ID check for everyone to go online. Digital Fourth strongly opposes legal mandates for technological verification of people’s ages online. This bill won’t protect kids from the negative consequences of Big Tech; instead, they will kill the non-Big Tech Internet, by imposing expensive burdens on volunteers who operate community forums, listservs and blogs. The House should focus on proven, non-corporate-sponsored solutions, like education on online harms and universal user protections that don’t target or disempower youth, and that therefore don’t require invasive online ID checks.” –Alex Marthews, Co-Chair, Digital Fourth

“After witnessing the current horrors of the Trump administration and the failures of social media platforms like Discord to adequately prevent data breaches, I cannot imagine how anyone thinks that age verification would make a single person in Massachusetts safer. Our personal information should not be put on the marketplace for anyone to buy and abuse, from Meta to Stephen Miller. The legislature should drop this effort and instead send the Consumer Data Privacy Act to Gov. Healey’s desk and actually keep us safe online.” – Noah Risley (they/them), Jamaica Plain Progressives Steering Committee Member.

“Intersectional Innovation and Impact Labs opposes age verification requirements and similar forms of digital surveillance targeting youth due to serious privacy concerns and the ways these measures widen existing digital divides, particularly for vulnerable communities seeking access to critical resources. With 28% of Boston’s population being foreign-born, surveillance measures such as ID checks will not effectively address online harms against youth, but instead risk deepening economic and health inequities by limiting access to essential information and support.” -Muhammad Burhan (They/Them), Executive Director of III Labs.

NEW LETTER: Massachusetts social media ban will help Trump and will not keep kids safe from Big Tech

See the original at https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-05-11-new-letter-massachusetts-social-media-ban-will-help-trump-and-will-not-keep-kids-safe-from-big-tech/

The Massachusetts House has advanced H. 5349 (now H. 5366), a draconian and unconstitutional bill that would ban minors from social media, force social media platforms to enable parental surveillance of teenagers’ online activity, and subject everyone to privacy-invading online ID checks in order to access information or speak out online.

Dozens of civil liberties, racial justice, LGBTQ+, press freedom, abortion access, and human rights organizations have spoken out against these dangerous and misguided “age verification” laws, several of which have had their constitutionality questioned by the courts.

And a Massachusetts-based coalition of LGBTQ groups including the The Queer Neighborhood Council, III Labs, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, ACLU of MA, and the Transgender Emergency Fund have specifically been pressuring local lawmakers on this issue. Late last year, the Boston City Council introduced a resolution condemning “age verification” and censorship legislation, citing harm to the city’s LGBTQ youth. 

Trans youth in Massachusetts are already terrified of losing their health care. They’re being terrorized by a bigoted administration. Now Massachusetts lawmakers are advancing legislation that would cut them off from access to lifesaving online resources and support? Shameful doesn’t begin to cover it. 

Big Tech social media companies cause real harm, and lawmakers are right to want to do something about it. They should pass privacy, antitrust, and algorithmic justice legislation that actually makes sense and is enforceable. Instead, Massachusetts legislators are actively helping Trump’s authoritarian takeover by pushing for legislation that expands censorship and surveillance. This bill is a gift to the Palantirs of the world—expanding Trump’s surveillance state by forcing everyone to associate their government ID with everything they post at a time when the DOJ is sending subpoenas to social media companies demanding they hand over the names of people running accounts critical of ICE. 

This legislation would make kids less safe, not more safe, while forcing everyone to upload their government ID or submit to a facial recognition scan in order to post online. The definition of “social media” in the bill is so wildly broad it would sweep in almost the entire Internet, including resources like Wikipedia. 

Even red states with conservative supermajorities have avoided some of the parental surveillance provisions present in the Massachusetts bill that raise serious concerns for the safety of LGBTQ youth and young people’s right to privacy. Requiring social media platforms to verify parental consent is completely unworkable. The logistics of this requirement are a nightmare: proving that an adult is a guardian of a child requires giving very sensitive information to social media platforms that are already ripe for data breaches and presents even more obstacles for young people in abusive families, foster care, and parents navigating complicated custody dynamics. This is an impractical and invasive idea that has been abandoned in almost every other version of this type of legislation across the country. 

Age verification and censorship legislation will hurt kids and benefit Big Tech. If Massachusetts lawmakers want to address harm, they should listen to experts, scrap this terrible bill, and instead advance privacy legislation that strikes at the heart of social media companies’ harmful business practices.

We recommend Massachusetts lawmakers engage with human rights groups on their concerns with this bill. We oppose any version of this bill that mandates invasive age verification, bans young people from social media, requires parental surveillance of teenagers, and strips everyone on the internet regardless of age of their anonymity.

Additional resources on this topic:

Signed,

Act on Mass
Advocates for Youth
Arts Equity Group
ArtsWorcester
Asian American Resource Workshop
Asian Pacific Islanders Civic Action Network – Massachusetts
Boston Democratic Socialists of America
Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective
Brandeis Democrats
Digital Fourth
EducateUS
Episcopal City Misson
Fight for the Future
For Artists By Artists
Freedom of the Press Foundation
Frizz Media
GreenRoots
Guardian Project
IfNotNow Boston
Indivisible Upper Cape
Intersectional Innovation and Impact (III) Labs
Jamaica Plain for Palestine
Jamaica Plain Progressives
Jewish Voice for Peace – Boston
Kavod Boston
Mass 50501
Massachusetts Pirate Party
Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC)
MassEquality
Matahari Women’s Worker Center
Mid Cape Indivisible
MRKH Intersex
Muslim Justice League
Neighborhood Grow Plan
North Shore Progressives
Old Pros Org
Pa’lante Transformative Justice
Parenting is Political
Partners in Sex Education
Progressive Massachusetts
Protect Trans Futures
Secular Student Alliance
SIECUS
Sierra Club Massachusetts
Somerville for Palestine
Student Clinic for Immigrant Justice (SCIJ)
Student Press Law Center
The Coalition for Student Mental Health
The Cordial Eye
The Queer Neighborhood Council
The Tor Project
Unitarian Universalist Mass Action Network
United American Indians of New England (UAINE)
V’ahavtah: A Judaism Beyond Zionism Synagogue
Woodhull Freedom Foundation
Yale Privacy Lab

Follow-up to Spring Forward Webinar “Spring Forward: Investing in People, not Prisons: The Prison Moratorium and Beyond”

Thank you so much to everyone who joined our Spring Forward webinar on Wednesday about the prison moratorium and the important work happening on decarceration with Mallory Hanora of Families for Justice as Healing!

Follow-Up Links

  • You can watch the video here. 

MEJA Letter to State Reps re: FY 2027 Budget

Dear State Representatives, 

Our local public schools face a growing and dire funding crisis, and we need the state to step up and support our students. The recently released House FY26 budget takes several significant steps toward delivering the funding our schools and students need, including increasing per pupil minimum aid to $160, proposing an enrollment decline mitigation fund, and funding the Special Education Circuit Breaker at 75% eligibility for reimbursement. By supporting critical K-12 school funding amendments in the House budget next week, you have an important opportunity to chart a stronger course for our nation-leading public education system. 

As we reach the end of the Student Opportunity Act’s six-year implementation period, we have the chance to continue advancing toward an education system that fully supports every student throughout their educational journey. But the progress we’ve made toward repairing past inequities in education funding is threatened by the high inflation of the past few years, which is forcing districts across the state to make impossible choices. Federal changes impacting our schools and students have made the outlook even worse. 

As a result of high inflation not accounted for in the Chapter 70 funding formula, districts across the state are being forced to cut their budgets, lay off educators and staff, and cancel long-needed investments in programs such as Advanced Placement, arts, and music. Inflation exceeded 7% in FY23 and FY24, but Chapter 70 funding only increased by 4.5%. The costs our students and schools face for out-of-district special education, school transportation, health insurance, and school building projects have increased at an even higher rate. That means cuts to programs our students depend on. 

And as immigrant families face the challenge of surviving under the administration’s deportation regime, families are living in fear and keeping children home from school to avoid ICE. As a result, school enrollment has dropped in dozens of Massachusetts communities this year. Fewer students means cuts to funding — and real consequences — for everyone. 

On behalf of tens of thousands of students, parents, caregivers, educators, and community members across the state, we ask you to support the following amendments to the House’s FY27 budget: 

  • Amendment #41 filed by Rep. Margaret Scarsdale – Ensuring Adequate and Equitable Funding for Public Education
  • Amendment #316 filed by Rep. Jim Hawkins – In District School Transportation
  • Amendment #389 filed by Rep. Sean Reid – Community Schools Program
  • Amendment #1066 filed by Rep. Brandy Fluker-Reid – Charter School Reimbursements
  • Amendment #1203 filed by Rep. Jim Hawkins – Strengthening the Special Education Circuit Breaker Program
  • Amendment #1284 filed by Rep. Orlando Ramos – Chapter 70 Inflation Adjustment
  • Amendment #1586 filed by Rep. Adam Scanion – Special Commission on Chapter 70 Funding
  • Amendment #1713 filed by Rep. Marjorie Decker – Whole Child Grant Program 

We look forward to your support of these much-needed amendments that will ensure that all students in Massachusetts receive the support they need to thrive. 

Thank you, 

Vatsady Sivongxay, Executive Director, Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance (MEJA) 

Jessica Tang, President, American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts (AFT MA) 

Keondre McClay, Executive Director, Boston Education Justice Alliance (BEJA) 

Erik Berg, President, Boston Teachers Union (BTU) 

Lisa Guisbond, Executive Director, Citizens for Public Schools (CPS) 

Viviana M. Abreu-Hernández, President, Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MassBudget) 

Tatiana Begault, Executive Director, Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety & Health (MassCOSH)

Alicia Thomas, Co-Director, Pa’lante Transformative Justice (Pa’lante) 

Jonathan Cohn, Policy Director, Progressive Mass (PM) 

Vanny Huot, Director, Revere Youth in Action (RYiA) 

MEJA is a coalition led by Massachusetts students, parents, educators, school and college staff, and education advocates with a shared vision: that all students, regardless of income, race, gender, identity, religion, birthplace, or abilities, have access to high-quality, equitable, and democratically controlled public education that addresses the educational needs of the whole student and where every student thrives to reach their full potential.

Less Than 100 Days Until the End of the Legislative Session

The formal legislative session in the Massachusetts State House ends in less than 100 days, on July 31.

Although the session will continue on an informal basis through January 5 of next year, the vast majority of all legislative action will happen between now and the end of July. So what’s happened so far?

There have been 167 bills signed into law:

  • 122 were home rule petitions for one city or town
  • 22 were administrative matters for specific state employees
  • 10 were budgets or supplemental budgets
  • 4 were awareness days
  • 2 were bond authorizations

That leaves 7 stand-alone bills:

  • Temporarily extending hybrid meeting access for local meetings
  • Updating the state’s shield law protecting access to gender-affirming and reproductive health care
  • Setting the primary election for September 1
  • Strengthening protections against assault & battery for transit workers
  • Making car rentals more affordable
  • Updating the collection of birth and death statistics
  • Modernizing cannabis regulations

Now, to be fair, the Legislature has passed various new policies through the budget, such as banning tenant-paid broker’s fees and creating an immigrant legal defense fund (both big wins). And we have been able to see transformative investments in education and transportation due to Fair Share revenue that YOU helped win on the ballot in 2022.

And some bills have passed one chamber and not the other. You can see some of those on our Legislator Scorecard, through February.

But what this shows us is that there is still so much work left to do this session. We’re ready to keep fighting. So keep making calls and emails (an getting friends and neighbors to do so as well).

The House Redrafted the PROTECT Act. How is the new bill different?

On Friday, the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee reported out a redraft of the PROTECT Act, the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus’s bill to strengthen protections for immigrant communities in Mass.

Original: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5158 

Redraft: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5293 

The bill is a mashup of the PROTECT Act and Healey’s bill. For example, it takes language around protecting courthouses from Healey’s bill, not the PROTECT Act  (see comparison chart here).

PROTECT 2.0 eliminates the following provisions of PROTECT 1.0: 

  • The section requiring disclosure of ICE or CBP employment in the POST certification process 
  • Several of the protections for individuals in ICE detention
    • The guarantee of 1 free telephone call within the first 2 hours of ICE detention 
    • The requirement that detention facilities maintain a “secure electronic locator system” for detained individuals, replacing it with a less specific requirement for record-keeping. 
    • The guarantee that detained individuals will be provided access to legal services organizations 
    • The requirement that a public hotline enabling people to identify individuals in custody have hours “sufficient to provide timely location confirmation” 
  • Some of the language banning communication between state and local law enforcement and ICE:
    • The ban on communication with ICE, as opposed to simply “initiation” of contact.
    • The ban on “ facilitat[ing] a transfer timed to enable a federal civil immigration enforcement action”  
    • (BUT the language does remove the conditional descriptor of “primary” in its ban on the “use state or local resources for the purpose of facilitating a federal civil immigration enforcement action”) 
  • The expansion of agencies able to certify individuals for U and T visas to include the executive office of the trial court and the juvenile court department; the department of children and families; the executive office of labor and workforce development and any agency within the secretariat with authority over wage and hour, workplace safety, unemployment insurance or labor standards; the Massachusetts commission against discrimination; and any other state or local agency designated by regulation of the secretary of public safety and security in consultation with the attorney general.

PROTECT 2.0 adds the following provisions: 

  • A requirement that employers provide notice to employees within 48 hours of notice of an upcoming ICE workplace raid (“I9 inspection”) 
  • Inclusion of “the likelihood of imminent deportation” to the factors considered at a bail hearing, which could lead to immigration status being treated as an indicator flight risk in and of itself and could exacerbate racial disparities in bail hearing outcomes 
  • Directive to Governor Maura Healey’s administration to create rules around locations where ICE agents would be prohibited and multilingual guidelines for state agencies about how to comply (A watered down version of Healey’s “sensitive locations” language) 

Neither PROTECT 1.0 nor PROTECT 2.0 did the following: 

  • Ban future 287(g) agreements between sheriffs and ICE. More than sixty percent of 287(g) agreements around the country are signed by sheriffs. 
  • Provide a clean ban on 287(g) agreements, as opposed to one with a series of conditions. The conditions in the bill are designed to never be met, but other states have done clean bans.
  • Terminate the one existing 287(g) agreement in the state, i.e., the DOC contract, of which Governor Maura Healey has been a staunch defender.
  • End ICE detention in Massachusetts (e.g., “shutting down Plymouth detention center”) 

Find some more detailed textual analysis here.