Jim Mageau critiqued for false information

Charlestown's leading Trumper strikes a nerve

Philip Eil

Some people know exactly why this mural was funded. (April 10, 2026)

By now, the Great Providence Mural Kerfuffle is mostly over.

The in-progress mural of Iryna Zarutska on a downtown building has been permanently discontinued. The owners of The Dark Lady, the LGBTQIA-friendly bar that greenlit the project, have said they are “deeply and sincerely sorry.” A smaller mural of Zarutska has been completed on the wall of Opa, a Lebanese restaurant on Atwells Ave. And some excellent reporting on the affair has been published by the Boston Art Review and The Providence Eye (where I’m a board member), among other outlets.

But there are still aftershocks reverberating in the local media. And one of them is worth mentioning.

Mageau (left) is Charlestown's most prominent Trumper

On April 25, the Providence Journal published a letter from a reader named James Mageau in Charlestown who expressed outrage at the way the first mural on the wall of The Dark Lady was halted. The letter – written in response to the Journal’s coverage of the brouhaha – made a lot of bad points, which is hardly noteworthy for Journal letters.

But it also included a significant error of fact. In the last lines of his letter, Mageau wrote:

I believe the controversy rests primarily among the left-wing socialist, communist and progressive community. They are having nervous fits over it because Elon Musk is helping to underwrite the costs of painting murals of victims attacked by undocumented immigrants. [Emphasis added]

This is not true.

EDITOR'S NOTE: That Jim Mageau twists the truth beyond recognition is no surprise to Charlestown residents who have been subjected to Mageau's bullshit for decades. We've cited Mageau's confabulations for much of that time, even giving him his own "Topics" tab (click HERE) that links to almost 200 Progressive Charlestown articles.  - Will Collette

Zarutska’s killer was born and raised in Charlotte, as this fact-check from the Charlotte Observer notes.

Mageau didn’t cite the source of his misinformation. But it’s possible he heard it from our president, who, during his 2026 State of the Union address, falsely stated that Zarutska’s killer “Came in through open borders.”

When it comes to the Journal, I attribute this flub more to understaffing than malice. The paper, which is owned by the mega-conglomerate USA Today Co. (formerly known as Gannett), has been run on a bare-bones staff for a while now.

But, whatever the cause, printing such a claim without an editor’s note is an egregious error.

In 2026, with the Trump administration enacting anti-immigrant policies at what Human Rights Watch has called a “dizzying pace,” I don’t need to spend much time explaining why xenophobia should be challenged, not spread.

And amidst a broader anti-immigrant backlash built on lies, the claim that immigrants are violent is particularly pernicious. For anyone in need of a refresher, I recommend this 2024 blog post from the American Immigration Council: “Immigrants Do Not Commit More Crimes in the US, Despite Fearmongering.”

Among that post’s points: “immigrants—including undocumented immigrants—have lower rates of felony arrests than U.S.-born individuals,” “growing immigrant populations have been associated with reductions in violent and property crime across the U.S.,” and “Sanctuary cities in the U.S. do not experience higher crime rates than non-sanctuary cities.” A section called “The Bottom Line” reads: “Policies that protect immigrants do not result in higher crime rates but instead contribute to safer, more trusting communities for all residents.”

There are good arguments for why opinion pages shouldn’t publish false claims of any kind. I’m a fan of this 2013 essay about climate deniers from an L.A. Times Letters editor, Paul Thornton, who wrote, “Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published.”

But at the very least, the Journal should add a note to Mageau’s letter. And, however understaffed the paper is, it should take care, in these hate-filled times of ours, not to spread misinformation that harms some of our most vulnerable neighbors.

Philip Eil is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Providence. He is the former news editor of the The Providence Phoenix. His debut book, Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the "Pill Mill Killer," was released in 2024.

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