Massachusetts is broken and I'm running for Senate to fix it and save its children

As a poor kid growing up on the frayed edges of the most violent neighborhood in Detroit, I learned to look out for myself at an early age. A warm bed at the end of the day wasn’t a guarantee; neither a safe home. 

After my father left us without as much as a goodbye, my mother cycled through boyfriends upon whom she depended to make ends meet. That didn’t stop one of them from hitting her in the head with an iron fireplace poker as I watched, horrified. I never got the chance at a sheltered childhood.

Perhaps because of my rocky upbringing, I’m proud that my home state of Massachusetts gives poor kids a chance at a sheltered childhood; at least, it tried to. Inaction, elitism, and apathy at the federal level, including from senior Bay State Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have forced state officials into a series of excruciating choices. 

Almost invariably, the losers in those decisions have been disadvantaged children.

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Since the 1980s, the state’s "right to shelter" law has mandated that pregnant women and children will be housed no matter what, and for a long time that law worked really well; we were proud to be the only state to enshrine that in statute.

We had the lowest rate of homelessness in the country and the lowest number of veterans living on the streets. Through public-private partnerships, we built the model for how to meet our most vulnerable residents at the front door.

Then the migrant crisis began.

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Suddenly, millions of desperate men, women and children seeking better lives sought out Massachusetts as a haven where they knew lawmakers enshrined a right to have a roof over your head and three meals a day. It’s become much more than that: no-bid contracts worth tens of millions of dollars went out to provide dry cleaning, cab rides, job training, and even down payments to afford first and last months’ rent. To flip an old cliche, that’s not a hand up; it’s a handout.

Massachusetts is now spending more than $1 billion annually to plug the leaks in a system that isn’t just breaking – it’s breaking families. 

Violent criminals, a small fraction of our 7,500 homeless migrant residents, have been charged with rapes, statutory rape, throwing bricks at police officers, and much more we don’t know about because the state won’t release full incident reports. Often, it’s fellow migrants living alongside these individuals who are the victims.

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I’m running for United States Senate because I believe the most powerful deliberative body in the world needs a poor kid as a member. In Highland Park, my hometown, we had signs that literally read "Police do not patrol here." Today, Sen. Warren, is pressuring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to terminate its violent migrant detainer partnership with the only remaining sheriff in the state who will honor it – a good man who just happens to be from the opposite party.

The irony of escaping my childhood home only to see that same warning apply in my chosen home isn’t lost on me.

Violence is just one symptom of the problem. Despite promising a right to shelter, we’re seeing more and more migrants shoved out of the system to make room for the next surge. In Quincy, just south of Boston, more than 50 women and children are sleeping on sidewalks outside a train station. All because politicians who never had to sleep outside a day in their lives are too afraid to deal with a problem they created.

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One state can’t house the whole world, but we certainly tried. Comprehensive immigration reform, including a secure southern border, is the minimum threshold to meet this crisis head on. But when President Biden supported a bipartisan bill that would cap migrant crossings to 1,400 per day, Warren voted against it. She insists that a pathway to citizenship for every migrant is the right thing to do, but makes no mention of how or where they’re supposed to live.

Pandering to extreme special interest groups keeps people like Warren in power, and it’s the first habit I intend to break if I’m fortunate enough to serve the families and neighbors I now call friends. We must get back to commonsense, bipartisanship in this country to find real solutions for our problems. 

Our immigration system is broken. It is bankrupting the commonwealth and placing the burden on the taxpayers. It is stressing our state’s education system and infrastructure. The migrant crisis is not a problem that will just go away, it takes real leadership and courage to find a solution that puts people before party. 

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In Massachusetts, we pride ourselves on leading in everything from democracy to the digital age. We’ve lost sight of that in this crisis, and it’s time we admit it.

It’s time we fix it, and once again give poor kids a shot at the American Dream. Trust me, it pays off.