The count out of Massachusetts this week: at least a dozen illegal aliens arrested by ICE Boston in New Bedford, per the Boston Herald. WGBH reports the operation stretched wider than that, with at least two dozen detained across New Bedford, Dartmouth, and Fall River. Criminal histories are still trickling in, which is standard for the first 48 hours after an operation. What we know is arrests happened in multiple towns, and the usual people are upset about it.

At least two dozen arrests across three communities is real work. No record, no mega-operation, just agents doing their jobs in a state that spends a remarkable amount of energy making that job harder.

Gov. Maura Healey responded, because of course she did. Healey has built her whole posture around standing between ICE and the illegal alien population of Massachusetts, and she's not about to break character now. The governor's office put out the familiar material: concerns about families, concerns about communities, concerns about basically everything except the immigration status of the people arrested or the victims of whatever they did to get on ICE's radar in the first place.

New Bedford's mayor answered the bell too, along with city officials. You can set your watch by the sequence. Operation happens, press conference follows, somebody says the word "traumatized," and a resource fair gets scheduled. Nobody ever gets around to explaining why a city full of officials sworn to uphold the law keeps treating the enforcement of that law as a natural disaster.

What I'd watch for now is the follow-through. Arrests are step one. Removal flights are the scoreboard. An arrest in New Bedford means nothing if the alien is released on a notice to appear and disappears for another five years. Every gap between arrest and removal is a chance for the count to stall.

The Herald's reporting says "at least" a dozen, and WGBH's number is higher still. I expect the final count to rise once the paperwork catches up. I'll update when it does.

Healey and the mayor can hold all the press conferences they want. The arrests happened anyway. That's the part they can't spin, and it's the only part I track.

The count: at least 12 arrested in New Bedford per the Herald, at least 24 detained across New Bedford, Dartmouth, and Fall River per WGBH, criminal histories pending, removals to follow.