Mass. Senate wants to put more money toward legal defense fund for immigrants

Massachusetts Senate Democrats plan to include more money for a legal defense program to help immigrants facing deportation in a supplemental spending bill slated for release Thursday morning.

The program, known as the Massachusetts Access to Counsel Initiative, was created over the summer as part of the state budget and has helped hundreds of people retain lawyers at no cost. Unlike most criminal defendants, people in immigration court typically do not have the right to a free court-appointed attorney.

Senate President Karen Spilka said she wants to give the initiative another $1 million as part of a supplemental spending bill.

“We need to ensure that the funding is there, because unfortunately, the Trump administration is continuing to increase the number of people that they are — I hate to use the term kidnapping at times — but suddenly appearing and grabbing people,” the Ashland Democrat said in an interview.

Lawmakers allocated $5 million to the legal defense fund in the fiscal year 2026 budget that Gov. Maura Healey signed in July. Advocacy group Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Coalition won a contract to oversee the program. It used the money to help hire 24 full-time immigration attorneys to work at organizations across the state.

Those attorneys had taken on more than 400 cases as of late March, while another nearly 700 people had qualified for services, state officials had previously said. And the full scale of the demand was even greater — thousands of people had called a hotline that was set up to field requests for legal services.

The coalition is pushing lawmakers to set aside $15 million in the next state budget to expand the initiative's size and reach.

The organization has said there are similar programs in California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Mike Kennealy, one of three Republicans running to oppose Healey for governor, in a statement Thursday criticized the program: "If Maura Healey spent less of your tax dollars helping illegal immigrants evade deportations and more of her energy on reviving our state’s economy, Massachusetts would be in a far better position today."

Spilka said she believes the legal defense fund in Massachusetts provides “critical services.”

“This clearly is working in a way that when people are suddenly picked up and detained, that there are attorneys that can meet with them and work to help get them bond if that's appropriate, or know their legal rights,” she said.

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that funding for the legal defense program comes from the state's general reserves. That money is appropriated as part of a supplemental spending bill that also taps cash from the state's so-called millionaires tax.