Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey committed an act of Democratic heresy Tuesday, saying “I think that some of what Donald Trump has done on the border makes a lot of sense.”

“I won’t get into specifics, but the general move and recognition that there needed to be more control brought to the border is absolutely correct. And certain things have been done that make a lot of sense,” she told reporters.

It’s surprising that the State House dome didn’t topple.

Healey knows about the border crisis first hand — all Bay Staters do thanks to former President Joe Biden’s porous border policies. An influx of immigrants hit Massachusetts in waves, and the state spent over $1 billion to house and care for them in emergency shelters. Healey said she raised the issue with the former president, telling him he needed to act on the border and “shut it down two years ago, three years ago now.”

Biden did eventually limit border crossings, but it was too little, too late.

Democrats weren’t always so hands-off with illegal immigrants. Remember how former President Barack Obama earned the sobriquet “Deporter in Chief.” His administration deported 2.4 million people from fiscal year 2009 to 2014, including a record 435,000 in 2013, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

He took some heat from immigration activists and pols, but no one called him a fascist.

Then came Donald Trump, the antithesis of Biden, and deportation became a four-letter word. Which is why Healey’s shoutout is so surprising as it acknowledges that yes, there was a problem and it’s good that someone’s finally doing something about it.

There was, of course, a but.

There “are certain things that the Trump administration is doing now that don’t make sense,” added Healey.

“Nobody in this country should have ICE come into their home or into a place of work without due process rights, right? And I think that that’s a real problem right now. They’ve just gone too far in terms of the issue of immigration, and that’s creating incredible fear and community and causing a lot of heartache and anxiety,” she said.

Obama faced similar criticism, with the American Civil Liberties Union writing in 2014 “the Obama administration has prioritized speed over fairness in the removal system, sacrificing individualized due process in the pursuit of record removal numbers.”

People who enter the U.S. illegally are living on borrowed time, navigating life here without visas or other documentation. They can find work, usually low-paid and arduous, get drivers licenses, and enroll their children in schools. But a secure foothold is out of reach unless they take steps to become legal: become lawful permanent residents with a Green Card, and later apply for naturalization.

Millions of immigrants have come to America legally, taking the necessary steps until they could be sworn in as citizens. If advocates really want to end the fear faced by illegal immigrants when there’s an unexpected knock on the door, they should help them get back on the right track to legal citizenship.

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