Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has a message in response to threats from within the Trump administration to bring “hell” to Boston in pursuit of the president’s mass deportation plans.

“Bring it on,” she said.

Campbell, speaking during an interview aired Sunday by WCVB, said that while the country is facing a constitutional crisis on a number of issues and the state’s immigrant communities stare down threats from the Trump administration, the courts are where the battles will be fought and won.

Because of that, Campbell says she has found herself “on the front lines” of defending Massachusetts residents against a long list of “continuous unlawful conduct” by the Trump Administration, some of which represents efforts to undo longstanding legal precedent and even erase plainly written portions of the U.S. Constitution. Campbell’s office currently engaged in more than half-a-dozen lawsuits against Trump or members of his administration.

“There is a blatant disregard for our legal system and for the rule of law and everyone should be concerned, even those who supported this President should be concerned,” Campbell said.

The president was lawfully elected, the attorney general said, and she would love to work with him on his campaign promises to lower costs for families, but his administration isn’t doing any of that so far.

“Cuts to NIH funding, treatments for — for example — pediatric cancer, how is that advancing affordability in Massachusetts?” she asked.

As things stand in Washington D.C., the members of the state’s congressional delegation are limited in their ability to counteract Trump’s plans to dismantle parts of the federal government, Campbell said. Those plans, she said could cost the Bay State upwards of $20 billion annually.

A “constitutional crisis,” Campbell said, is not indicated with an “on or off switch,” but is better seen as a dial that’s ratcheted up or down. Right now, she said, “we are heading to a very dangerous place.” Campbell offered by way of example Trump’s efforts to undo the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause.

“If the president can, with the stroke of a pen, attempt to dismantle the constitution — with the birthright case, that we challenged of course, birthright citizenship, they were attempting to not only rewrite the constitution but to do away with the Fourteenth Amendment, 150 years of precedent — I don’t care who you are in this country, even if you voted for this president, if you allow him to do that, he can then take away the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and any other amendment,” Campbell said.

The effort to stop Trump’s plans for mass deportations, to fire broad swathes of the federal workforce, and to punish states that don’t comply with his political ideology by stripping them of research funding, according to the Attorney General, falls then to her and her fellow AGs.

“Jobs, infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, childcare, education, educational services for our special needs students, you name it, AGs are the ones, in this moment in time, that have the tools to fight back, to file lawsuits, and we are winning,” she said.

Campbell noted the centuries-long crusades fought against oppression which allowed her, the first Black woman to serve as attorney general in state history, to have an open conversation with members of the free press. The sacrifice of those who came before, Campbell said, leaves her little other option.

“If not now, then when? This is the time to exercise courage to really protect our people,” she said.

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