Immigration

Gov. Maura Healey insists the feds speed up migrant work authorization approvals, as she says employment will get them out of shelters sooner.

In a Thursday letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Healey asked for a handful of regulatory changes that she said would help migrants quickly and immediately apply for work authorizations. The governor also urged the Biden administration to digitize immigration processes.

“Thousands of families are living in emergency shelter in our state, with a significant rate of increase in the past several months,” Healey wrote in the letter. “Many of these new arrivals are drawn to Massachusetts for a safe haven, but arrive with neither the means nor personal connections to secure shelter and access to fundamental human necessities.”

Healey said there is “historic demand” in Massachusetts for workers across all industries amid low unemployment. Tens of thousands of job openings could be filled by new arrivals, she said.

“Every work authorization issued represents an opportunity to meet employer needs, support our economy, and reduce dependency among new arrivals,” Healey wrote.

Healey declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts last month, a move that was paired with a call to the federal government for expedited work authorizations and additional funding to deal with an overburdened shelter system.

In the weeks since, the emergency shelter crisis has shown no sign of letting up, with the Healey administration projecting as many as 1,000 families could enter the system each month.

The governor met with Mayorkas weeks after the emergency declaration during a private huddle at the State House, during which, she has said, she had a “productive conversation” to “support Massachusetts’ needs to address the rapidly rising number of migrant families arriving in Massachusetts.”

Healey said the letter was a “direct follow-up from our most recent discussion.”

Two direct regulatory changes would immediately support more new arrivals working, Healey wrote.

Those are allowing migrants to work once they’re granted immigration status by the feds and that they can use their application as a provisional employment authorization document.

“These fundamental changes in rules,” she wrote, “… could be pivotal for those arrivals’ chances of beginning to earn income.”

She also suggested logistical and technical improvements for arrival and employment authorization processing including increased digital communication between U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and improving access to online forms with direct language translations.

“Massachusetts has stepped up to address what sadly has been a federal crisis of inaction that is many years in the making,” Healey wrote. “We appreciate your direct engagement, but even with the exhaustive efforts of your team within the bounds of what is allowable by law, we will still be in desperate need of expanded federal partnership, federal funding, and urgent federal action.”

The Healey administration considered suspending the state’s decades old right-to-shelter law in the run up to an emergency declaration last month, but opted against it after taking into consideration the complicated legal concerns associated with such a move.

Officials at the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities reached out to multiple providers to inform them of the plan to suspend the law, which requires the state to provide housing and services to homeless families, in the days before the emergency declaration.

But the idea was ultimately scrapped after the administration realized it did not have the authority to suspend a 1983 law signed by then-Gov. Michael Dukakis.

“We had heard before the announcement from state officials themselves that they were looking to suspend the right to shelter,” said Kelly Turley, associate director at the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, adding the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, not the governor’s office, made calls to advocates. “Many of us heard from them in the days before the announcement was made that that was their intention.”

At a press conference announcing the state of emergency in early August, Healey said she did not consider suspending the state’s right to shelter law.

“No, I was never going to end nor did I have the authority to end the right to shelter in the state,” she said when asked if there was ever consideration to temporarily lifting the law.

In a statement Thursday, Healey spokeswoman Karissa Hand said the administration had “many conversations about various potential strategies to confront this emergency.”

“Right to shelter is the law and we remain committed to ensuring eligible families have a safe place to stay,” Hand said.

A month into a state of emergency in Massachusetts, Healey has taken few sweeping public actions to respond to an overburdened emergency shelter system brimming with displaced families and newly arrived migrants.

That has drawn criticism from Republicans, who say the administration’s response is lacking to an emergency shelter crisis where hotels and motels housing people often pop up in communities across the state without much warning to locals.

But housing and migrant advocates say the true impact of the emergency status is felt on the ground and in the sped up bureaucratic processes that often hold up contracts or other decisions on Beacon Hill.

In one instance, the International Institute of New England, a regional resettlement organization, said it submitted a $450,000, one-year contract at the end of last week to provide legal assistance with employer authorization documents to people staying in one the roughly 40 emergency shelters that do not have contracted service providers.

State officials and the organization are scheduled to meet again on Monday, said Jeff Thielman, president and CEO of the institute. Both sides are ready to ink an agreement, an example of the emergency “putting everyone in state government, I think, on alert to respond to this crisis,” he said.

“I would say that this is a pretty expedited contract process. So they’re moving the contract process through more quickly than they normally do. Though, I haven’t seen it yet,” he told the Herald by phone. “We keep having discussions about it. So they’re trying to move it through as quickly as possible. So it feels like they’re moving as fast as possible on contracting, reviewing.”

Healey has touted several moves over the past month, including activating up to 250 members of the National Guard last week to help more than 40 emergency shelters that do not have contracted service providers.

The governor also held a private meeting with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at the State House last month. Healey also publicized last month $1.9 million in federal funding to expand shelter and transportation services for migrants, though it was the City of Boston that applied for those dollars earlier this summer with the state as a sub-applicant.

“I declared an emergency. I’ve received $2 million dollars from the federal government. We’ve housed another 600 families successfully,” Healey said Thursday. “I met most recently with Secretary Mayorkas and the Biden administration Department of Homeland Security to press for expedited work authorizations.”

Since the start of the emergency, at least 721 families have entered the state’s shelter system, according to data from the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

More than 6,271 families were in state shelters as of Thursday, according to the state. Officials estimate that more than a third of families in the emergency shelter system are migrants.

Still, some say Healey has not done enough to deal with what they describe as an immigration crisis in Massachusetts.

The Healey administration’s response has been “inadequate,” said state Rep. Peter Durant, a Spencer Republican who is running for a state Senate seat vacated earlier this year.

Communities are getting hit hard with an influx of newly arrived migrants and displaced families “with little or no warning,” he said. And Massachusetts is appealing for people fleeing unstable home countries because of “all of the benefits that are available to them,” he said.

“It’s a pretty good deal to come to Massachusetts,” he told the Herald.

Nobody likes living in a hotel, Thielman said as he rejected the idea that people are coming to Massachusetts because of its right-to-shelter law.

“The shelter law doesn’t attract anybody to Massachusetts. It’s just not a true statement. So I don’t think repealing the law is the solution. I think the solution is that we need to have a better federal immigration system,” Thielman said. “That’s a big part of the problem. People should come here with work authorizations if they’re paroled into the country and they meet certain criteria.”

The Healey administration is projecting about 1,000 families, including locals who are experiencing homelessness and newly-arrived migrants, to enter Massachusetts’ emergency shelter system each month, according to state senators who attended a Thursday briefing.

That projection used family units as measurement, which likely means the number of individuals entering the system could stretch thousands more. State officials do not keep a detailed breakdown of the types of families in the emergency shelter system but estimate more than a third of the 6,200-plus are migrants.

Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, Housing Secretary Ed Augustus, and other officials held two separate briefings Thursday for House and Senate lawmakers to provide updates on a National Guard deployment next week and the administration’s response to a shelter system overburdened both by new arrivals but also excruciating housing costs.

During the virtual Senate briefing, lawmakers who attended told the Herald the administration displayed projections for the emergency shelter system.

“There’s no end in sight,” said Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Sutton Republican who attended the meeting. “We said, ‘how long do we expect this to go on?’ And they had a graph that showed every month there’s going to be about 1,000 more families.”

Sen. Michael Moore, a Millbury Democrat who was present at the virtual meeting, also said the administration shared those projections. Sen. John Keenan, a Quincy Democrat who listened in on the meeting, also confirmed the projection.

“Certainly, those types of numbers place a strain on our infrastructure in terms of housing,” Keenan said by phone Friday. “I keep telling people the best we can do is the best we can do.”

A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities did not confirm the exact projections shown Thursday but said Massachusetts “has seen a significant rise in the number of families seeking shelter.”

“We have placed more than 800 families in emergency shelter over the past month and expect this pace to continue in the months ahead,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The family shelter system will continue to be strained without urgent action taken by the federal government.”

A day before Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts, there were 5,550 families in the emergency shelter system, according to data provided by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. That number increased to 6,297 families in state shelters as of Friday morning, according to the housing department.

Moore said Thursday’s meeting “went as well as possible” considering the difficult situation the state is facing and Massachusetts’ right-to-shelter law, which requires officials to provide temporary housing to homeless families.

“I have empathy with the administration having just come into office and having this crisis arise. So I think for where they are in their administration, I think they’ve done a good job dealing with the circumstances,” he said. “But I do think going forward, whether it’s through the administration, or myself, or my colleagues, we need to get some more assistance from the federal government.”

The pressure on the shelter system has led the Healey administration to prop up a sweeping net of hotels and motels to temporarily house families as they await permanent solutions. Municipal officials whose cities and towns play host to those locations have often said they received little advance warning of the placements.

Keenan said communication issues stem from the administration finding themselves in a situation “that is very dynamic.”

“In terms of notifying communities, I think they’re trying to give as much notification as possible. But my understanding is, and this is consistent with what has happened in Quincy, is that they don’t know from one day to the other who’s coming, and what the need will be for housing in the communities,” he said. “It’s not as if communities are getting advance notice of two weeks or a month because in many cases, that just seems to be an impossibility given the circumstances.”

Fattman said his main concern during the Thursday meeting was the administration’s communication with local officials. He echoed concerns expressed by a range of House lawmakers Thursday, including top Democrats.

“I think the one question everybody’s asking is, why the hell aren’t you communicating with these towns and letting them know that you’re sending people, which is obviously Sutton and Sturbridge’s experience too, which I represent,” Fattman told the Herald by phone Friday.

Families come to the state seeking shelters “at all hours of the day and often into the evening seven days a week,” a Healey spokesperson said.

“It is of upmost importance that families are provided with shelter as soon as possible and, while we work hard to provide local officials with notification of placements within their communities, sometimes notification occurs just before or after families have been sheltered,” spokeswoman Karissa Hand said in a statement.

Local officials in Sutton received two days’ notice via email that more than 50 migrants were being relocated to a Red Roof Inn, according to  Fattman. The hotel is in a high risk area for crime and lacks physical infrastructure like a multi-line telephone system that allows first responders to pinpoint 911 calls down to the room in which they originate, Fattman said.

Twenty-eight families were placed in Sutton starting on Aug. 27, according to the administration. Department of Public Health “rapid response nurses” visit shelter sites within the first few days families are there to triage any urgent health issues.

Moore said the administration’s communication at the outset of the emergency shelter crisis could have been better. But as the situation has worsened, he said communication has picked up.

“I still think there’s an issue with better communication with some of the municipalities,” he said.

Gov. Maura Healey issued an executive order Thursday activating up to 250 members of the National Guard to provide basic services at emergency shelter hotels that do not currently have a contracted service provider.

The Healey administration said there are about 40 emergency shelter hotels where displaced families — including migrants — are staying that Guard members could be deployed at. But state officials said they will evaluate which sites require members and deploy them next week.

“Massachusetts is in a state of emergency, and we need all hands-on deck to meet this moment and ensure families have access to safe shelter and basic services,” Healey said in a statement. “… While we work to implement a more permanent staffing solution, the National Guard will provide an efficient and effective means of delivering these services and keeping everybody safe.”

The mobilization comes weeks after Healey declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts because an influx of migrants started to crowd the already burdened emergency shelter system. The increase in new arrivals along with surging housing costs here has put a strain on the emergency shelter system.

Massachusetts is a right-to-shelter state, which guarantees shelter and subsistence for eligible displaced families, including newly arrived migrants who are fleeing unstable conditions in their home counties.

There are more than 700 families in hotels that do not have contracted service providers, said Kelly Turley, associate director at the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. Most times, municipalities, faith groups, and community organizations have stepped up to help families in those locations.

“But because it’s happening very quickly, without a lot of notification of where families are being placed, it’s made it difficult even for community groups that would want to help out to know how to plug into that,” Turley said. “There has been some push from providers and advocates around having MEMA or some other entity help [the Executive Office of] Housing and Livable Communities really coordinate the services.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s office and City Council President Ed Flynn, who is serving as acting mayor, received calls from the governor’s office alerting them that there would be National Guard presence in Boston Friday, to support staff at hotels that are housing displaced families, sources familiar with the calls told the Herald.

The National Guard will be in the city “for a period of time,” a source said, including at the emergency shelter site at Marriott South Bay, where migrant and displaced families are staying.

The Guard will help to support displaced families staying in Boston, but there is not necessarily a staffing shortage at hotels in the city. The presence is more about supporting another municipality dealing with that issue, a source said.

“The National Guard is coming into Boston to assist with implementation and support of migrant families,” a source said. “It’s just to make things easier for the families, coordinate services, streamline services, provide the families with a little bit more assistance and ensure things go smoothly.”

In a statement to the Herald, Flynn said the National Guard has “tremendous experience in assisting cities and towns through the commonwealth.”

“During emergencies and difficult times, including the pandemic, the men and women of the National Guard have answered the call to service and we are fortunate to have that experience and leadership once again helping the residents of Boston,” he said.

As of Wednesday, there were 6,073 displaced families — including migrants — staying in the state’s emergency shelter system, according to the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

Some emergency shelter sites in Massachusetts, such as an Eastern Nazarene College dorm in Quincy, are staffed with contracted service providers. The Quincy college dorm is run by the shelter management firm AMI Expeditionary Healthcare, which has its United States office in Reston, Virginia.

Healey previously said Massachusetts is spending more than $45 million on programs and emergency shelters for newly-arrived migrants and displaced families. As part of her state of emergency declaration, Healey made an appeal to the federal government for help.

“Although Massachusetts is adding shelter units every week, without extraordinary measures, we fear we will be unable to add capacity fast enough to place all eligible families into shelter,” Healey said in a letter to the federal government. “Even though we are currently spending more than $45 million per month on programs to help these families, our ability to create enough new shelter space and to provide necessary supportive services is falling short.”

State employees will staff the Regional Rapid Response Teams, which will be tasked with overseeing sites in a given geographic region to better coordinate services and serve as central points of contact.

“The Regional Response Teams will prepare sites for opening, communicate site-specifics to inform placements, arrange connection to public benefits, and support municipal and legislative partners,” the Healey administration said in a statement.

This is not the first time the Healey administration has activated Guard members to deal with shelter-related issues.

Healey activated up to 50 Guard members to support “townhouse-style” housing at Joint Base Cape Cod for displaced families.

Massachusetts National Guard Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Gary Keefe said the Guard is committed to assisting residents.

“Our role in the response to the ongoing housing crisis will expand to leverage our multitude of robust and adaptable capabilities in emergency and domestic operations to help those in need,” he said in a statement.