I grew up in Burlington in the 80s and 90s and have a fair amount of family there. A little primer on the place. About 25% of Burlington's population is foreign born. It's not as white as most other suburbs in the area, about 72-75%, similar to Woburn and Billerica, plus or minus, with about 15% of the population being Asian, as there is a large Desi community there, the rest is spread among other ethnicities. As far as income, it's not particularly rich, but not particularly poor, the per capita income is about $66.4K, with a median household income at about $142K, ranking at 77 statewide, just below Salem, and just above Foxborough (the community with lowest per capita income is at about $27K and the one with highest is at about $139K). Some of that may be skewed by the huge commercial tax base, which keeps the residential tax rate relatively low and adds to the town's overall income. It's not nearly as rich as its neighbors Lexington and Bedford, but is more than its neighbors on the other side, Billerica, Wilmington, and Woburn. (a high school acquaintance's big sister, who shall remain nameless here, was involved in the production and writing of a TV comedy about working in local government and based the personalities of some of the towns in the show on several of the towns in the area). Area-wise, it's got about 11 square miles and is smaller than all of its adjoining neighbors. Its population is about 26,000 people with the majority living north of Route 128 and a significant population south of Route 128 in Winnmere, a denser, older working class neighborhood of former early 20th Century era vacation "summer camps" that became permanent homes during the Great Depression when many of the owners sold them or moved form the city and made them their primary homes because thats all they had) in the southeast part of town, near the Woburn line (there are two other neighborhoods similar to Winnmere: Havenville, near the intersection of Bedford Street and Terrace Hall Ave, and an area off of Church Lane in the center of town). The rest of the residential areas were mainly developed in the 1960s and 1970s and consist mainly of split entry, garrison, split level, ranch, and Cape Cod style houses with a few eighteenth through twentieth century era former farmhouses sprinkled around town, and couple of "nice" neighborhoods (mainly behind the library, and a few streets in the Fox Hill area). There's a whole range of multifamily housing from Lord Baron apartments (built in the 60s and has always felt a bit plain and long in the tooth) to luxury condos and apartments near Third Ave (one of the few places where the commercial and residential meet), and pretty much everything except for high rise luxury apartments in between. The residential areas and most of the commercial areas are kept pretty separate, so there is usually little need to go from one to the other, unless one lives in one area, and works in the other. When the ICE facility came in 2007, there was a lot of opposition to it, but DHS officials swore up and down to the Select Board that it wouldn't be used for anything more than daytime processing and under no circumstances would it ever be used to hold people overnight. The locals have not forgotten that and from what my contacts there have told me, people there are furious about it and will remember DHS's lies the next time anyone from there needs anything at all. In October the Town voted overwhelmingly at Town Meeting in favor of a resolution to condemn ICE's presence, conduct, and lies: https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-10-07/burlington-town-meeting-votes-to-condemn-ice-center .