The Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security heard our advocacy and made favorable recommendations on the House side versions of our priority decarceration bills, ad part of Prisoner Legal Service's  Dignity and Freedom Campaign. These bills include: 

• Elder and Medical Parole bill (H.2693),

• Visiting Process Reform bill (H.2591), and

• Human Rights, Programming, and Education Access bill (H.2608).

These bills are moving forward in the process and are now in the House Committee on Ways and Means for review. We need your help to ensure that the House Committee on Ways and Means and other House leadership know that carceral reform must be on their priority agenda to pass this session. 

Take action here to move these bills forward!

Concerned community members have witnessed escalating numbers of violent ICE arrests at MA courts alongside the complicity of court officials, staff, security, and local police officers. Many poor, Black, brown and other marginalized ethnic immigrant community members are overpoliced and oversurveilled, thereby representing a disproportionate share of individuals summoned to court for criminal proceedings. They are additionally being singled out by federal enforcement actions unrelated to their reasons for being in our state courts. This is one of many ways in which our state’s public institutions are being used as deportation traps. The current federally mandated campaign of terror levied against immigrants, and those racially profiled as “immigrant,” puts us all in danger.

Our state government has a responsibility to do everything in its power to stop its courts from being used as staging grounds for targeting and handing over our community members to federal immigration officers.

Please sign this petition to tell public and elected leaders to keep ICE out of Massachusetts courts.

We continue to demand the immediate removal of the correctional officers who killed Shacoby Kenny. Our community deserves truth. Our people deserve safety. And Shacoby deserves justice. For more information, click here.

Click here to take action!

Concerned community members have witnessed escalating numbers of violent ICE arrests at MA courts alongside the complicity of court officials, staff, security, and local police officers. Many poor, Black, brown and other marginalized ethnic immigrant community members are overpoliced and oversurveilled, thereby representing a disproportionate share of individuals summoned to court for criminal proceedings. They are additionally being singled out by federal enforcement actions unrelated to their reasons for being in our state courts. This is one of many ways in which our state’s public institutions are being used as deportation traps. The current federally mandated campaign of terror levied against immigrants, and those racially profiled as “immigrant,” puts us all in danger.

Our state government has a responsibility to do everything in its power to stop its courts from being used as staging grounds for targeting and handing over our community members to federal immigration officers.

Please sign this petition to tell public and elected leaders to keep ICE out of Massachusetts courts.

The Trump administration has pledged to deport millions of our friends, family members, employees, and neighbors around the country, including here in Massachusetts. This would tear our communities apart, trample on our fundamental freedoms, and devastate our economy.

To carry out its agenda, the Trump administration has vowed to dramatically increase immigration detention and to co-opt local officials as additional manpower. Indeed, the administration immediately issued Executive Orders that attempt to fulfill this promise. Without mass detention, there can be no mass deportation.

State officials cannot change federal immigration policy, but basic constitutional principles make clear: they don’t have to voluntarily contribute to its cruelty. The Dignity Not Deportations Act will help guard against the abuse of power by federal ICE agents, ensure that our Commonwealth remains true to its values, and continue to safeguard state resources.

UU Mass Action’s partners, Families for Justice as Healing and The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, continue to work toward ending the incarceration of women and girls.

The 2025-26 policy priorities are the Prison Moratorium, Elder and Medical Parole, Decriminalizing drugs, and the MA Survivors Act. Take action here!

Donate here!

BIJAN is reaching out again now because our funds are dangerously depleted due to ICE’s violence in our state, which has impacted unprecedented numbers of people.  Please donate today! 

So far in 2025, the Beyond/BIJAN Bond fund has more than DOUBLED the amount we paid in bonds in 2024. To date this year, we have paid 

• $965,000 in bonds, freeing 123 people. 

• $62,055 in commissary ($20/month) to directly support people in Massachusetts snatched from their communities and caged by ICE. This allows them to make phone calls, buy soap, clothes and needed supplies, send mail and try to get by while detained.

• $79,345.50 in emergency crisis response funds for families impacted by a detention or deportation. 

Despite the current administration’s efforts to end immigration bond and keep people in “mandatory detention,” lawyers are fighting back, filing habeas petitions and challenging court rulings . So we are paying more bonds, allowing people to pursue their immigration cases from the community instead of facing deportation. Without your donations, we will soon have to pause paying commissary and bonds. Please donate today, and consider becoming a monthly donor to increase your impact!

Since we are an all-volunteer network, we have no staff to pay, no rent for an office, and no overhead. This means that every dollar of your donation goes directly to help our immigrant friends and neighbors in this moment of trauma and crisis. Thank you for being part of this essential work and for choosing freedom!

Expanding private jet emissions will be devastating to our climate. See below for opportunities to take action!

1. Resolution: We are calling on Unitarian Universalist congregations in MA to adopt a Resolution urging Gov. Healey to stop private jet expansion at Hanscom Field airport or anywhere.  Learn more here! For questions, contact: faith@stopprivatejetexpansion.org  In the meantime, please take action as an individual by signing this petition to the Governor.

2. Petition: Sign this petition to the Governor!

Medical Aid in Dying is a practice that allows a person with a prognosis of less than six months to live to be prescribed an medication that they can take at the time of their choosing to allow a peaceful painless death. The law has multiple safeguards, such as the requirement that two doctors agree on the prognosis, and that there be a written witnessed request and a waiting period, and that the person has to take the medication themself. This practice has been legal for many years in 12 jurisdictions and there has not been a single credible case of this law being abused.

Both the Senate bill (S.1486) and the House bill (H.2505) have passed the Joint Committee on Public Health and are now with the Joint Committee on Healthcare Financing. If it passes this committee there are several steps before a final vote, so it’s important that it move forward from this committee as quickly as possible.

Please consider contacting your legislators and urging them to support H.2505 and S.1486.  Calls to members of the Joint Committee on Health Care Finance are especially impactful if you are on of their constituents. Senate: Cindy Friedman, Chair, John Cronin, Vice Chair, Julian Cyr, William Driscoll Jr. Paul Feedy, Panel Payano, Kelly Dooner. 

House: John Lawn Jr, Chair, Meghan Kilcoyne, Vice Chair, Dawne Shane, John Francis Moran, Tommy Vitolo, Judith Garcia, Kip Diggs, Lindsay Sabadosa, Chyna Tyler, Christopher Markey, Hannah Kane, David Muradian, Paul Frost.                                       

Please contact Molly Walsh with any questions