‘A constitutional crisis’: Markey seeks another Senate term to fight Trump administration

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Editor’s Note: This is the second of two stories on the Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate. Read the first story here.

BOSTON — Sen. Ed Markey has spent 50 years in the U.S. Congress representing Massachusetts. Yet, he says, his case for reelection to the Senate centers on something new: a constitutional crisis.

In the last year, Markey says, federal entities have sent armed agents into the streets of U.S. cities, civil rights have faced unprecedented challenges, and ever more political power has amassed in the hands of the president. Markey said he’s ready to fight back. 

“I do think we’re in a constitutional crisis,” he said. “We are in a very dangerous place.”

The senator spoke with The Light in a Beacon Hill office for a conversation focused on immigration issues, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court issued two controversial immigration decisions that left hundreds of thousands without status. 

Markey, a Malden native and son of a milk truck driver, first joined the U.S. Congress in 1976 as a member of the House of Representatives representing the MetroWest region. In 2013, voters statewide elected Markey to the Senate.

This time around, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who has represented the Massachusetts 6th District for six terms, has put forward an energetic challenge to the senator, who turns 80 on July 11. Moulton, 47, has argued in the run-up to the Sept. 1 Democratic primary that Markey is “a good man” but that it is time to pass the torch on to younger leaders. 

While initial polls in the fall put Markey between 9 and 23 points ahead of Moulton, the race has tightened. A poll released by Emerson College on May 7 placed the senator just five points ahead, and a University of New Hampshire poll out June 30 has Markey up by six.

Markey said that he is ready to take on the challenges that will come his way in another six-year term.

“I do not like bullies,” he said, referring to President Donald J. Trump. “I do not like people who are taking on the most vulnerable, the people who are most subject to having all of their rights undermined.

“That’s who I am and that’s who I have always been,” he continued. “And that’s who I am going to continue to be.”

‘Constitutional crisis’

Markey said Trump has repeatedly violated the U.S. constitutional order, especially with his mass deportation campaign.

Markey and Moulton both support abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On the campaign trail, Markey repeatedly touts his vote in the House against the Homeland Security Act of 2002 that created ICE.

“I was very afraid that this scenario would unfold,” Markey said. “[ICE is] just an agency that is so corrupt in its soul. It’s so much now just an extension of the Trump White House, his own personal army, that it just is mounting as a threat to our democracy.”

Markey’s feeling was reinforced in December 2025, when an operation sent hundreds of federal agents — predominately from ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection — into the streets of Minneapolis. The operation ended 2½ months later after agents fatally shot two activists — Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

Shortly after their deaths, Moulton announced his support for the agency’s abolition. Markey has publicly supported such a move since 2018.

“It just leads to situations like we saw on the streets of Minneapolis,” Markey added, “where two people were actually murdered by ICE agents.”

Over 60,000 immigrants were in federal civil detention as of April 4, the most recent data available from Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse Immigration. That’s an almost 54% increase from the over 39,000 in custody on Jan. 26, 2025, the week after Trump took office. 

The Light has confirmed that 87 immigrants have been detained in the Greater New Bedford area since January 2025.

The immigration actions are a leading factor, Markey said, in what he described as a deepening “constitutional crisis” since Trump returned to power in January 2025. Markey questioned the administration’s reshaping of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that runs the nation’s immigration courts.

The Light has previously reported about the firing of immigration judges not willing to follow the administration’s hardline stance on immigration, as well as Board of Immigration Appeals decisions that narrow immigration judges’ authority to allow immigrants to remain in the country. The moves have amplified the senator’s concerns around due process protections. 

“They are not allowing individuals to avail themselves of the process that we’ve put in place,” he said. “These people have a right to be heard. They have a right to have their stories be told.

“The objective has to be to allow these courts to have the judicial independence which they need, so that they’re not living in terror” of making a decision against administration priorities, Markey said. “That is not justice. That is living in an authoritarian dictatorship.”

Detainee conditions

ICE detention has become a major source of contention, with immigrant detainees and advocates reporting inhumane conditions nationwide, including those at the ICE Boston Field Office in Burlington, Mass. Markey visited the facility on Dec. 13, 2025, one of several members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation to inspect the facility, including Moulton, U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley. All have noted subpar conditions. 

According to a report from Human Rights Watch, 52 people died in ICE custody between Jan. 20, 2025, and June 4, 2026, a four-fold increase from numbers under the Biden administration and a rate 2½ times greater than during the first Trump administration.

Markey posted a video to social media in April, shortly after he visited the ICE detention center housed at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, the only long-term immigrant detention facility in the state. 

“I met with detainees who had been in the country for 23 years, had never committed a crime, who were gardeners in their community,” Markey said. “Trump said when he was running that he was going to get the rapists and murderers off the streets. 

“But that’s not what this is about. This is now about removing people,” he continued. “[Immigrant detention has] just been transmogrified into something which is profoundly anti-American.

“It’s escalated under Trump to a level that’s truly unprecedented,” he said. 

Supreme Court reform

The recent Supreme Court decision to allow the administration to cancel Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians hung heavy over Markey. Hours before he spoke to The Light, Markey spoke at a Boston rally — where he was joined by Boston City Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune, a Haitian-American woman — in support of TPS protections.

“This Supreme Court majority is completely off the rails in terms of their interpretation of the Constitution, rule of law, and the protections which should be in place for anyone who is in this country,” he told The Light. 

“Unfortunately, these justices now reflect the Trump philosophy, rather than the actual constitutional interpretation that should guarantee people to be protected in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness in our country.”

In mid-June, Markey sponsored a Senate bill that would extend Haitian TPS protections until 2029. A similar bill passed the House on April 16. (In late June, Moulton introduced the Temporary Protected Status Relief Act, designed to reaffirm federal courts’ jurisdiction over review of TPS extensions.)

Twice during the Biden administration, in 2021 and 2023, Markey introduced unsuccessful legislation to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court from nine to 13. If re-elected, he says, he’ll reintroduce the idea if the Democrats win the 2028 election.

“This Supreme Court reflects the Trump administration’s very arbitrary and unconstitutional view of our nation,” the senator said. “The only answer is to pass my legislation.”

“The only correction will be, in the short term, the expansion of the Supreme Court,” he continued. “And that’s why I’m going to continue to advocate — once we win the House [of Representatives], the Senate, and the presidency — for the Democrats to take that action.”

Affordability

Massachusetts is among the most expensive states in the country to live in. According to data from the commonwealth, homebuyers require an annual household income of roughly $162,000 to afford a new home.

That puts such a dream out of reach for many in New Bedford, where the median household income is just under $57,000 and the average household income is around $73,000.

Unemployment in New Bedford was at 4.7% in 2023, the most recent data available, compared to 3.5% that year in Massachusetts. Markey said he is confident that ICE actions in the city have increased that number. (Statewide, this May, the unemployment rate sits at 4.5%.)

“Small businesses, for example, in a community like New Bedford, have a very high percentage which are minority-owned,” Markey said. “And to the extent to which people are afraid to shop, or those businesses have tariffs which are being imposed upon them. … I think it’s quite clear it’s happening.”

A recent report from the Brookings Institute found that the immigration enforcement surge has led to a loss of 668,000 jobs in the top 25% of cities that have seen the biggest increases in immigration enforcement. Markey currently has a bill in the Senate that would issue grants to agencies facilitating legal help for those in immigration proceedings. He also introduced the Small Business ICE Disruption Act, meant to provide economic support to businesses affected by ICE actions.

“This affordability crisis is directly attributable to Donald Trump,” he said. “And it manifests itself even more dramatically in a community like New Bedford.”

Markey concluded the interview by saying that despite the challenges facing the nation, he still sees reason to celebrate the 250th anniversary of independence.

“On a daily basis, I’m very angry at what Trump does, and what he does in conjunction with Republicans in the House and Senate,” he said. “I think that the American people are going to give Trump and these Republicans the answer this fall.

“I’m encouraged by the response that I’m seeing all across the commonwealth,” he concluded. “But I think it’s going to happen across the country as well.”

Kevin G. Andrade can be contacted at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org.