Massachusetts migrants taking shelter beds from taxpayers, allowed in with no vetting: former director

A former migrant shelter director in Massachusetts described the chaos he saw under the state’s right-to-shelter laws, saying that the influx of illegal immigrants has clogged the state’s infrastructure and that there is virtually no vetting for the surge of border crossers. 

Massachusetts spent nearly $1.1 billion of taxpayers’ money this fiscal year to house and feed migrants streaming into the state, often in hotels that have been converted to shelters. However, taxpayers have at times found themselves boxed out of shelters as immigrants have crowded the system and taken priority, said Jon Fetherston, who acted as a migrant shelter director at the Marlborough Holiday Inn between November 2023 and July of last year.

Under its right-to-shelter law, established in 1983, the state must provide housing for displaced families and pregnant women. In 2023, the state’s shelters reached their capacity of 7,500 enrolled families – yet migrants continue to use Massachusetts’ programs. 

Fetherston previously detailed the repeated violent incidents and mistreatment of children he saw during his tenure – and decried a lack of consequences for their perpetrators. 

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In light of a man from the Dominican Republic, who was accused of possessing an AR-15 and $1 million worth of fentanyl in a state-subsidized room last month in Revere, Fetherston explained the vetting process – or lack thereof – in an interview with Fox News Digital. 

Leonardo Andujar Sanchez, 28, was arrested on Dec. 27 after his girlfriend called Revere police to report that he had drugs and a long, black gun hidden under a pink suitcase in their hotel room. The woman told police that she had been living at the Quality Inn for three months and that she and Sanchez had obtained the room through a refugee program.

“I worked in that shelter for a very limited time,” Fetherston told Fox News Digital. “You can’t hide an AR-15 in that room. You cannot hide drugs in that room. The rooms are not big… the case manager there should have been standing up… there should have been red flags… to say ‘Hey, listen, this guy’s not attending those meetings. This guy is blowing off housekeeping.'”

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Fetherston said that the incident was just another example of a lack of security and vetting at the state’s strained migrant facilities. 

The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, which oversees the state’s shelter program, told Fox News Digital that it has security guards at every facility and conducts warrant checks every 30 days. However, Fetherston did not see that activity during his tenure. 

“I will tell you that all the shelters that I’ve either worked in and volunteered [at] do have a form of security. But… it’s really basically somebody sitting at the desk – no better than you would have in a corporate office park… it’s certainly not the level of security that you need in these shelters… I never saw anybody come in and do a warrant check.”

Staff at the shelters were primarily chosen because of the languages they spoke rather than any kind of experience, he said.

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“You hire people just because they can speak the language that you need, being either Haitian or, you know, Portuguese or Spanish. So you’re not necessarily hiring a qualified caseworker or mental health advocate or somebody who’s been experienced in navigating these things, because those people don’t exist,” he said. 

“A lot of times… the case managers became sympathetic to their fellow countrymen when they taught them how to navigate the system and not always in the most ethical ways. And that’s where the chaos came down.”

Meanwhile, he said, there was “a tremendous amount of domestic violence… a tremendous amount of violence towards children [and] a tremendous amount of violence towards other countrymen.”

Fetherston said residents’ alleged friends and relatives would constantly cycle through the facility where he worked. Despite policies about residents coming through security, staffing was stretched so thin that actually keeping track of who was coming in and out was near impossible. 

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“[The Revere arrest] touch[es] the hot point [for me] from day three, maybe, of me being in the shelter,” Fetherston said. “‘Who’s that?… I didn’t check them in. I didn’t see them when they came in. Who were they?… How did this guy get past?’ ‘Well, that’s so-and-so’s uncle.'” 

Oftentimes, he said, families would “disappear” – housekeeping would report that a family had not been in their room for three or four days. He would get calls about residents showing up at the facility, and they would never arrive, or a person whose ID did not match at all would show up. 

Since a ruling handed down by the Supreme Court in November of last year, after Fetherston left the shelter, shelters are not allowed to ask families for identification or documents when they are applying for its short-term shelter program. 

This distinction, he said, makes Democratic Gov. Maura Healey’s recent call to further vet emergency shelter residents to ensure that they are in the U.S. legally, with rare exceptions, impossible. 

“I believe these changes are appropriate and needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of the state shelter system in a way that aligns with the original intent of the law,” Healey said in a statement. “In addition, these proposed changes will allow us to continue to ensure the safety of our system, support cities and towns in addressing the needs of unhoused families in their communities and put us on the path toward a more fiscally sustainable shelter system.”

“She can say she will increase vetting, but how do you vet someone who has no ID? She also wants migrants to self-identify if they have committed crimes in the past – that’s not going to happen,” Fetherston said. 

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“She is saying this now, in an attempt to get [this] out of the news, and then have someone to blame when the reform doesn’t happen,” Fetherston said. 

Healey’s office could not be reached for comment at press time.

Fetherston said he has had to turn away American citizens who had fallen on hard times amid the chaos at the state’s migrant shelters.

“I would have veterans walk up to the shelter, [saying] ‘I am a Vietnam veteran, I just need a room for tonight.’ And I would say, ‘I’m sorry. This is for migrants. All the public is not allowed. This is for migrants only,'” he recalled.

“I wasn’t always able to find, you know, a homeless veteran a place on a cold night. But we’ve got migrants,” he continued. “And once again, I don’t blame them living in a shelter where everything’s free for three free meals, free dry cleaning, free Ubers, has a roof over your head, free health care. And I’m sending a decorated veteran out into the cold. At least half a dozen times I had to do that.”

He also said that, although there are technically limitations to how long one can stay in the state’s shelters, they are not always enforced, and spots for citizens in need are not made available.

“You can’t blame the people who stepped up and tried to do their job. You have to blame the system and the person running the system for not putting checks and balances,” Fetherston said. “The governor had no plan and she just wanted to get these shelters open… Nobody specializes in this – Massachusetts is the only state in the entire nation that has the right to shelter. So it’s fair to say, well, they didn’t have qualified people. Well, nobody’s qualified for this because nobody’s ever had to experience this.”