Haitian migrants to leave Lowell

ON THURSDAY, the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for 500,000 Haitians living in the country. The majority of the almost 600 people living at the emergency family shelter at the former UMass Lowell Inn & Conference enter are Haitians, whose TPS wasn’t slated to expire until March 2026.

The ruling by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem comes on the heels of the administration ending TPS status effective April 7, for almost half of the 600,000 Venezuelans legally living in the United States. By September, the other half may also lose their TPS protection.

“Overall, 80% of our families are Haitian, 10% are U.S. citizens, with a small population from Venezuela,” Commonwealth Care Alliance Senior Vice President Lauren Easton said in an interview last fall. CCA is the contract provider for the shelter operations on Warren Street.

The Healey-Driscoll administration extended its lease on the university-owned property through the end of 2025 — six months after this demographic must now voluntarily leave the country or get deported.

As of September, almost 300 children were living at the 252-room shelter, with the majority under the age of 5. School-aged children were enrolled in Lowell Public Schools, and the state has been reimbursing districts $104 per migrant pupil per day.

A whole ecosystem sprung up around the migrant humanitarian effort, including jobs like the currently posted bilingual Haitian Creole family liaison, to English language learner classes, special education and other support positions to assist the migrants.

Both the City Council and the School Committee begin the fiscal 2026 budget review this spring, and cost categories related to the impact of the end of the TPS program will be part of the discussion.

Job cuts and openings

THE SILVER lining in all the federal government firings and private company layoffs is that that workforce talent may well trickle down to the municipal level. The daily job board in Friday’s MASSterList, which is a free daily morning newsletter that covers politics and policy in the commonwealth, listed almost 50 positions open ranging from clinicians to executive directors. Most of the available positions are in the government and nonprofit sectors.

The Lowell Public Schools is posting 129 open jobs, predominantly in teaching positions across all grades and disciplines.

The city of Lowell is posting 12 positions including a deputy director of finance, a deputy commissioner of public works/operations, and a transportation project engineer.

The administration of City Manager Tom Golden has made improving the city’s streets a priority. Through December 2024, the city spent more than $9 million on almost 60 area roadways. In 2023, the city completed almost $4 million worth of roadway and sidewalk reconstruction.

As good as Traffic Engineer Elizabeth Oltman is at her job, she can’t do it alone. Just in time for pothole season, this transportation project engineer position suggests that the street improvement effort is being strengthened and that Oltman may get some much-needed backup.

The other two positions are more interesting, particularly the deputy commissioner of public works position, which closes March 7. The City Council is worried about the ongoing maintenance of the city’s many aging municipal properties. It has also expressed increasing concerns about the maintenance required for newer properties like the $400 million Lowell High School project that is scheduled to be completed by the summer of 2026.

This position may be what’s needed to maintain that expensive and sophisticated building. It may also quiet the council’s desire for a stand-alone and staffed-up facilities department, which in the tightening fiscal climate, probably isn’t a reality.

The deputy director of finance position, which closes Tuesday, also bears watching. In December, Chief Financial Officer Conor Baldwin’s job title changed to assistant city manager for fiscal affairs/CFO. As an assistant city manager, Baldwin joins Shawn Machado and Department of Planning and Development Director Yovani Baez-Rose acting as Golden’s righthand team.

Conflict of interest no more

FOLLOWING BOTH internal and external outcry, Councilor Paul Ratha Yem said that he resigned from the Smith Baker Preservation Corporation.

During the Jan. 15 council meeting, Yem recused himself from the vote to demolish the 141-year-old, four-story, red-brick building that sits across from City Hall on Merrimack Street.

The Acre councilor, in whose district the majestic, but decaying church sits, was co-principal of the nonprofit organization Save Smith Baker. City Solicitor Corey Williams said given Yem’s professional relationship with the advocacy organization, “it would be inappropriate” for Yem to take a vote on the motion.

Several councilors questioned the appropriateness of Yem even being on the council floor for discussions on the property, much less submitting motions on a project in which he had a stake.

“I resigned from the Smith Baker Preservation Corporation on January, 21, 2025, so that there will be no conflict of interest for me being a city councilor and a member of the board of directors of SBPC,” Yem said in an email to The Sun.

The Secretary of State website shows that the corporation filed a certificate of change of director or officers on Jan. 23.

City Council election update

ADD JOHN McDonough to the list of people eyeing a run for the Lowell City Council race, perhaps for the District 4 Downtown seat held by Councilor Wayne Jenness. Although he hasn’t filed papers through the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance, McDonough told his listeners on his “City Life” broadcast Feb. 7 that a campaign may be in his future.

Should McDonough run, the head of the family-owned McDonough Funeral Home on Highland Street will join Belinda Juran, who is running for the Belvidere seat currently held by council appointee Corey Belanger, and Sixto DeJesus, who declared for one of the three at-large seats currently held by Councilors Vesna Nuon, Rita Mercier and Erik Gitschier.

According to the OCPF website, Ricky Thach, of Lowell, organized a Thach Committee in October to run for city councilor. He did not declare an office and his treasurer, Vincent Lee, has not completed the required treasurer training. But as no monies have been raised in the past four months, maybe Thach’s is a paper tiger candidacy.

Free speech on social media

IN A unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that government employees who censor social media speech or block its users based on their viewpoint violates the First Amendment.

Assistant City Solicitor Thomas Wood told the Lowell City Council at its Tuesday night meeting that the high court ruling did not distinguish between a public and private account. He noted that the ruling requires all public officials employed by the city to exercise caution when communicating with the public.

If you are a citizen who has been blocked or have had your remarks censored on social media by a public official in Lowell, The Sun wants to hear from you.

Where is the line?

“IT IS emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” That declaration by Chief Justice John Marshall is more than just a simple legal opinion, it is the entire backbone of judicial review, and more than two centuries of checks and balances that have kept any one person or entity of the federal government from becoming too powerful.

That ironclad precedent, ironically borne out of an instance of a new presidential administration refusing to honor the actions of the previous administration, is now under threat. Over the last several weeks, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have each made comments that indicate this administration does not believe in three co-equal branches of government. More and more this administration is proving our worst fears that it intends to coalesce as much power into the executive branch as it can, and within the last week Trump has made multiple statements that should simply terrify Americans.

It started last Sunday, with the most chilling statement to date with Trump’s social media post declaring, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

If you voted for and support this man, I want you to imagine, just for a second, the politician you hate most saying this statement. Imagine former Presidents Joe Biden or Barack Obama saying this. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had ever uttered a statement like that. What, exactly, would you interpret them to mean by those words?

Those are the words of somebody with ambitions of being a dictator, and every single American should see it as a clear red line crossed by our president.

If “saving the country” is enough justification for the most powerful individual in the government to ignore laws to enact their agenda, I can think of a whole book full of ways a Democratic administration could flip that right around in ways conservatives would really not like. That is not to mention the countless atrocities committed throughout history done in the name of “saving the country.”

We do not want to go down that rabbit hole.

Then, on Tuesday, Trump signed yet another executive order that, yet again, outright ignores the Constitution. This time his order declares that, per the live announcement, “only the president and attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion on what the law is.”

Friends, that is a factually incorrect statement from this administration, and any of us who didn’t fall asleep in at least one history, civics or media literacy class should understand this. For those who do not understand, here is a simple guide: the legislative branch creates and passes the laws, the executive branch signs and implements the laws, and the judicial branch interprets the laws and their validity within the Constitution.

That is it. Those words are settled law, and have been for centuries. There is no other possible interpretation of the Constitution and its layout of our federal government. The Trump administration’s assertion that it is “longstanding norm” for the executive branch to possess those judicial powers is lying to you.

If a president is free to ignore the judiciary then why do I still have to pay my student loans? Surely Biden would have been free to ignore the court orders stopping student loan forgiveness. Maybe he could have continued that eviction moratorium during the pandemic too, despite the Supreme Court pulling the plug, since he was apparently the only one with the power to decide what is law.

To beat a dead horse again, you should be extremely suspicious of an administration that wants to so brazenly lie to you, and one that essentially admits it wants to ignore our laws. This is from the so-called “party of law and order.”

But that wasn’t enough for the men who have it all. Later in the week still, the Trump administration intervened on what should be a state’s rights issue by declaring an end to New York’s congestion pricing plan. That action alone is not quite where the problem lies, as problematic as a president intervening on a state issue already is. The issue is how he celebrated his “win.”

“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” the White House said on social media, posting with it a picture of Trump donning a crown.

This is a shocking example of Trump’s anti-democratic mindset. This country, of which we will soon celebrate the 250th birthday, was founded on an explicit desire for self-determination, and to not be ruled by a king. For the president of the United States to liken himself to a monarch is more than a slap in the face to every single American who has fought and died in the name of liberty in those 250 years, it is a complete betrayal of everything we stand for as a country.

There is nothing less American than a king.

For the moment, these are just words from a purposefully divisive president, even the executive order itself so long as it isn’t enforced, but these are the kinds of statements an autocrat makes to justify something horrific down the line to their people, or at the very least something plainly and obviously illegal for their own gain.

Frankly, such a power grab should not be seen as the kind of thing you can see unfolding and then just continue to get up and go to work each day. At some point, enough does have to be enough.

If, and when, these statements are acted on, and the judiciary is disregarded, and the Republican Congress continues to lack a spine, and Trump exercises unchecked power to wield against his enemies, foreign and domestic, perhaps we should begin the uncomfortable conversation about having a national general strike.

Otherwise, if this isn’t seen as the line for most people, I’m afraid to find out there is no such line. To roll over and accept fascism without a resistance should frankly be seen as even more of an insult than the president declaring himself king.

Dam-removal meeting could get interesting

THE MERRIMACK River Watershed Council and Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust may get more than they bargained for at a public meeting this week to present plans to remove three dams on Beaver Brook in Dracut.

Residents of communities along the Merrimack are invited to attend the meeting as well as Dracut residents. So, they may get more than they bargained for, too.

MRWC calls the project “an exciting opportunity to improve Dracut’s resiliency and reconnect aquatic habitat.”

But a social media reference to compliance with the MBTA Communities Act and the availability of state grants for projects like the Beaver Brook dams touched off some familiar complaints about state government overreach.

The MBTA Communities Act became law in 2021 after several years of debate in the state Legislature. It covers 177 communities near MBTA service. Dracut is considered an “adjacent community” due to its proximity to Lowell, so the law applies.

Nearby Tewksbury — the boundary between the two towns is in the middle of the river — is also an adjacent community. Neither town reacted well to the law. Town Meetings in both communities rejected complying with the law by Dec. 31. The state then set a deadline of Feb. 13 to come into temporary compliance and a deadline of June 30 to fully comply. With little enthusiasm, both towns decided to implement temporary compliance.

Of course, Lowell, too, was impacted by the law, but the City Council early on accepted it. Chelmsford and Tyngsboro, which also have frontage on the Merrimack River, also accepted it.

With residents from all these communities invited to the MRWC meeting, they may have a chance to hear Dracut residents sharing nostalgic feelings about the dams, questioning the need for removing them, and complaining about state overreach.

The Thursday meeting begins at 7 p.m. at Dracut Town Hall. Registration is required. Snacks and children’s activities will be provided, but there may be enough entertainment without them.

This week’s Column was prepared by reporters Melanie Gilbert in Lowell, Peter Currier on the Trump administration, and Prudence Brighton in Dracut.