‘Everything is at stake,’ Attorney General Campbell tells Brandeis audience

On the day she announced her candidacy for reelection, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell delivered wide-ranging remarks at Brandeis University, including sharp criticism of the activities of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in state communities.

Campbell is the 2025 Justice Brandeis Practitioner-in-Residence at Brandeis and spoke on Oct. 21 to a packed audience in the university’s Shapiro Theater. The format of the event was question and answer, with students posing their preselected questions.

Campbell, who assumed the attorney general role in January 2023, opened her remarks with a frank nod to her unusual background, which includes growing up poor in Roxbury and having a father who was incarcerated at the time her mother died in a car accident. Her twin brother died while incarcerated as a pre-trial detainee due to inadequate medical care, and she has other relatives who are incarcerated.

“I have no shame in sharing my story,” she said. “I want folks to know why I do this work, which is to use the tools of government to bring about positive outcomes for other families.”

Campbell said she is an optimistic and deeply faithful person who prays and reads the Bible every day. A Princeton University graduate, she was unanimously elected Boston City Council president in 2018. She is the first Black woman to hold that title.

She has vigorously opposed a number of Trump administration actions and spoke about her efforts.

On immigration, a topic of pressing importance in Waltham, she said, “The egregious actions we are seeing by ICE in our communities is horrific, it is cruel, and it is absolutely not promoting public safety. It is promoting fear.”

She continued, “Most importantly it is suggesting, which is absolutely false, that every single immigrant here in the Commonwealth is a criminal, which we know is total nonsense.

“I will continue to stand up for immigrants regardless of their status, because I know what they contribute to this incredible state,” she said. As an example, she pointed out that if every Haitian immigrant in the state were to be deported, elder care in Massachusetts would be devastated.

She cautioned, however, that it is difficult to hold ICE accountable for egregious behavior given the power the federal government has over immigration. Her office is monitoring federal actions for discrimination and racial bias.

On the possibility of National Guard deployment, she said: “We are prepared if they were to show up here.” She stressed that the National Guard is designed to respond to an emergency and that local law enforcement is fully capable of handling incidents at public protests.

She lamented that only Democratic attorneys general, not any Republican state attorneys general, are engaged in work to hold the federal government accountable for its actions.

On politically motivated prosecutions, she said: “It’s still the exception. The majority of prosecutors in Massachusetts and in this country, including the AGs that I work with, do not use the incredible authority that we have, the incredible power that we have, to proceed with indictments to prosecute people on flimsy evidence or when we have no evidence.”

Nonetheless, she referenced the Trump administration replacing an experienced prosecutor with one who has no experience in order to secure an indictment and said, “It’s a scary state of affairs to say the least.”

She warned that if the president continues on his present course, “We will have a country that looks nothing like the United States of America, looks nothing like a democratic community or society.”

On technology, she noted that her office has a division focused on technology and welcomes advances that protect victims and help solve crimes. She underscored the importance of transparency, accountability and privacy. Communities need to know what technologies are being used by law enforcement and how, she said, adding that “discrimination by AI is still discrimination.”

Campbell spoke at length about attempts to undermine the Constitution and her specific concern about assaults on measures that have given Black people the right to vote.

Despite actions by the U.S Supreme Court that have weakened the Voting Rights Act, however, she expressed confidence in the court. “I still believe and have faith in the court as a whole. I don’t think this court aligns with the perspective of our president that the executive branch should have more full power and authority than it currently has.”

Still, she urged the audience not to underestimate the importance of this moment in the nation’s history. “Everything is at stake in this moment in time,” she said.

Campbell also spoke about reproductive rights and Massachusetts shield laws, as well as the need to improve the maternal health of Black women.

Her office is engaged in litigation against the Trump administration on multiple fronts, including birthright citizenship, protected by the Constitution.

“We are actively standing up for birthright citizenship in this country,” she said.

The event was hosted by Compact, the Samuels Center for Community Partnerships and Civic Transformation, and by Enact, the Abraham Feinberg Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation.