Letter: Support of ICE fits agenda for Burrillville councilor

During Trump’s first presidency, I joined other people in giving Sanctuary to 3 refugees from oppressive countries ruled by ultra violent gangs and corrupt leaders . These people also had deportation orders against them. I have great memory of taking these people to immigration lawyers, mental health clinics and physician appointments. These people are all now US citizens, have jobs and live in safe homes.
Suffice it to say that I feel happy about breaking the law for a positive purpose. These peoples’ only “crime” was to be undocumented.

Ale Pretti was a hero I saw the doctored videos trying to show him as attacking ICE agents with his legally owned and actually holstered 9mm. Pretti was stepping in front of a woman who’d been pepper sprayed and in the ground. He was holding his cell phone in one hand and the other hand was empty. Four agents wrestled Pretti to the ground , took away his holstered 9mm, and then shot him 10 times. To add insult to all this are people spewing rhetoric about the incident that they have no direct knowledge of. Pretti was called a “domestic terrorist”
I myself have done similar to Pretti by standing between unarmed people being pepper sprayed and their attackers. I have clear memory of some of these “heroic ” attackers making anti semitic comments towards me. I’m Jewish and often wear a Star of David when I go to a demonstration. I’m proud to be a Jew and a “left wing radical”
Maybe one of the “heroic patriots” here could call me “domestic terrorist ” ?

Bravo! Supporting this

Mr. Fox, I applaud your honesty, sincerity, common sense, professional response to Mr. Hunts editorial he crafted from very liberal media outlets like MSNow and CNN. Nothing in his editorial is original, authentic thinking… just regurgitated progressive talking points. He has that right in this country to repeat it, but gains no credibility for his argument from common sense patriots.

Mr. Hunt and his followers should think about how they would respond if the roles were reversed and common sense patriots treated them like the professional paid agitators who dox and instigate Federal agents doing their job getting Illegal immigrants out of our community. I hope they remain peaceful & respectful and DO NOT impede on the same civil & constitutional rights citizens with opposing views have as well.

In closing, God bless to all.

Can’t wait for November when we can vote Democrat across the board. Time to flush out the mentally deficient candidates that follow the orange man blindly, no matter how insane or illegal his wishes are. Vote out the Republican’s this fall and in 2028!

Great article Fred, Thanks for saying what many are thinking. This town needs less division and less partisan BS !

If our choice is between Fox and Fred, we are screwed.

Fred,

Clearly you got dropped off in the wrong part of the state. The east side of Providence, Barrington and or Newport welcome you.

God bless ICE and god bless the USA.

Fred, Say you are a liberal with out saying you are liberal. We do not need to welcome illegal immigrants anywhere in the United States.

I just read Mr. Fred Hunt’s January 31, 2026 letter to the editor on NRI Now and would like to offer a reply.

Mr. Hunt, the Chairman of Burrillville Democrat Town Committee, his committee members, and those who are running on his ticket in Fall 2026 seem to all be of the same mind on the issue that he raises. Yes, I support ICE’s efforts to make Americans safer by removing the deeply criminal elements of the illegal immigrant population. These are the murderers, child molesters, domestic abusers, drug dealers, and fraud perpetrators that Fred Hunts wants to protect. But keep in mind that all immigrants who crossed our borders illegally have broken the law with their first step here. I support legal immigration. Afterall, we are all descendants of immigrants to this great melting pot.

With the vilification of Federal police so rampant and supported by the left, I did make a comment during the Good & Welfare section of a recent Town Council meeting. I stated that it is our Town’s policy to support Federal and State law enforcement agencies and on the rare occasion that we had an ICE retainer request, we would support it as well. I am proud to live in and serve in the government of a town that has this as its policy. Just today a Federal Court ruled that Minnesota cannot block Federal immigration activity in Minneapolis. Breaking the law and attacking Federal law enforcement does not further the goals that Mr. Hunt and his candidates are after.

Mr. Hunt and his Democrat candidates will tell you that they want our Town to not support State and Federal law enforcement. That is delusional and dangerous and goes way beyond their usual protest activity. Many of us have seen Mr. Hunt and his candidates for Town Council waiving signs in our town. That is the right way to protest – peacefully. I support their efforts.

Mr. Hunt, his candidates and supporters refuse to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance at public meetings. That is another choice of protest they use, and they are protected in it. While I do not agree with them, I understand that they think differently about our country than I do.

But to suggest that our town selectively support or not support State and Federal law enforcement agencies goes beyond safe and reasonable protest. That would not only endanger those officials, but potentially our local police and our own citizens if we were to leave dangerous criminals at large in our town. While I have a say in our community, I will make sure that such ill-guided policies never go into effect.

Mr. Hunt shows his party’s complete lack of understanding of facts by trying to draw a parallel between the Charlie Kirk assassination and the death of the protestors in Minnesota. Charlie Kirk was sitting on a college campus, talking to the usual thousands of college students who had flocked to hear his message. He was assassinated by a deranged coward for doing nothing but sharing a peaceful message and inspiring millions in the way he did it. The protestors in Minnesota tragically lost their lives for illegally interfering in Federal police operations designed to remove hardened criminals from our country. Both attacked Federal officials who were doing the legal jobs they were sent to do. What other laws do Mr. Hunt and the Burrillville Democrats want to interfere with when they see State or Federal police doing their jobs?

If residents find this to be the number one issue not to vote for a Town Councilor, then you have your reason not to vote for me in November of 2026. I do plan to run again in the fall of 2026. Now more than ever, we need commonsense and experienced people to volunteer for local government service I find the work that I do for our town rewarding and I am blessed by God and my family with the ability and time to do this work. I am likewise fortunate to serve alongside an accomplished, diversely experienced and equally dedicated group of fellow Council Members. I am proud of the work done by the Town Councils that I have had the pleasure of serving on. Here are a few of the things that Town Councils that I have been a part of have done in the past twelve years:

We have kept our tax rate under control. Remember that the only thing that could have lowered taxes in Burrillville in recent history was the potential siting of the Invenergy power plant. It would have resulted in a lower tax rate across the community due to the tax treaty that was negotiated at the outset. The Town at large did not want that plant sited so the Town Council fought it and defeated them. The Town has contractual obligations to pay our police, teachers and town employees. The bulk of our budget is tied to pay and benefits for those groups. The contracts negotiated have been fair to the Town and its employees, but those contracts represent the bulk of our operational budgets. The job of the Town Council and Administration is to control the rate of increase and still be able to maintain and/or expand other services in our community. We have done just that.

We have successfully worked to secure many State and Federal grants to only expand services but to add amenities or improve some already in our town, all without overly burdening our taxpayers each fiscal year.

We completed the Downtown Pascoag revitalization and have now set our sights on long-term revitalization of the Nasonville area, most recently securing over a million dollars in grant funding to begin the engineering work for the Nasonville Redevelopment Zone.

We have vowed to not only support our local police but have outfitted them with modern equipment and arms to not only allow them to effectively do their jobs, but in a way to protect them when they put their lives on the line. We have supported intense certification efforts that the BPD has now been through twice.

We are in the middle of a larger recreational plan overhaul to look at how we maintain all of our sports and recreational facilities in the town. It will allow us an opportunity to reimagine both Hauser Field and Eccleston Field.

We have completed numerous park improvements and have more planned.

We are building a new skateboard park on Chapel Street.

We are considering a mountain bike facility with RI DEM at the old campground on Pascoag Reservoir.

We have rebuilt the mill pond dam in Burrillville and will create a wonderful new viewing plaza/concert area at the pond. Freedom Park is planned for work as well if we secure a grant to fund that work.

We have built a new generational sports field complex at the high school, while having to defeat an ill-guided and politically motivated attack from local out-of-touch environmentalists and the Burrillville Democrat Town Committee.

We successfully worked with the RI DEM to preserve Sweets Hill as open space within our community.

We moved the DPW into a new, modern facility in an industrial park, out of a residential community where they existed for decades, all without a charge to the tax rate.

We have funded safety improvements in all schools.

We have funded repairs and construction efforts at all local schools.

We are in the middle of building a new senior living complex off Steere Farm Road.

We continue road repair each year in town as our budget permits.

We have defended our Town form the idiotic housing policies passed by the liberal, out of touch leadership of the General Assembly. We have done this by being one of the few towns in RI to continually keep its affordable housing stock over the critical 10% Federally mandating threshold. This means that unscrupulous developers cannot put high density housing into our rural community.

We put a stop to the clear cutting of forest on commercially zoned land to just put up solar fields.

We have expanded services in our industrial park to help make the latest news of Charcuterie Artisan’s establishment of an Innovation Center a possibility. The park is ready for additional development.

We continue to support local growth of our commercial property base in ways that make sense and hope to have exciting news for our community in the near future. Each time we help to create a new business in town, it help to balance the tax load on our residential homeowners.

We have maintained the Town’s AA bond rating, making it cheaper for our residents when we must go out to bond (borrow money) for municipal or school projects.

We have been careful financial stewards of the LS Power Development tax treaty money, known to many of us by their former name, Ocean State Power. For nearly 40 years, this money has been used for our capital improvement projects, allowing us not to charge the taxpayer for such projects. We have been careful not to use this money to plug holes in the operational budget. That has been easy because we do not create holes in that budget. Our Town government lives within its means thanks to a financially conservative Town Council and Town Manager.

There are many other issues that come up in the normal course of running our town that are too numerous to list here, but my fellow Town Councilors and I are available to talk about them. I have been considering setting up some time outside of Town Hall meetings to give any who are interested the chance to talk about local issues and concerns, outside of formal settings. We will pick some local places for these opportunities. As we move into Spring, please keep an eye out for the times and places. I will see if State representatives want to join us as well in case there are questions for them.

I look forward to debating Mr. Hunt and his candidates on the full range of issues facing our Town. Name the issue, but please make it an issue that actually matters to Burrillville and its residents.

I will close this reply to Mr. Hunt’s letter by re-iterating that I plan to run for re-election to the Town Council. I am proud of the Town that I have raised my family in and have built my business in. I am passionate about the work that I do in my business life and in my public service life. I am not afraid to say when I am wrong or to reconsider my positions. But I am vocal about things that matter to me, our community and our country. I am a patriot who has spent enough time in less than desirable parts of the world to know how fortunate we are to live in this great country and how important it is to defend it. I am straight forward on issues, will tell you how I see them and answer any straight question with a straight answer. My record is clear and I am not hiding from it.

There are a range of topics and positions to consider when voting for any candidate. I go through the same process when I vote. If you want this one topic from Fred Hunt to base your decisions on, then you have it. I hope that I have given you more than one issue to consider here.

Donald Fox
Mapleville

Totally agree Fred!!