That’s it! Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is ready to declare a state of emergency after her administration was unable to get a hold of the migrant influx coming from the southern border.
Healey, a Democrat, announced that a state of emergency exists “due to rapid and unabating increases in the number of families with children and pregnant people — many of them newly arriving migrants and refugees — living within the state but without the means to secure safe shelter in our communities.”
From Fox News:
The state said there are nearly 5,600 families or more than 20,000 people in the state shelter system. Healey said there are numerous contributing factors, including “federal policies on immigration and work authorization” as well as a lack of affordable housing and the end of COVID-era programs.
Massachusetts is the latest liberal jurisdiction to call for help from the federal government due to a surge of migrants, despite not being anywhere near the besieged southern border. New York City, Chicago and the state of New York have all made emergency declarations this year and called for help in response to a migrant wave.
While the numbers have been only a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of migrants that hit the border each month, those areas have declared themselves overwhelmed and at capacity as migrants arrive.
Healey said that in July there were 100 families a day seeking emergency shelter while the numbers leaving shelter has declined by two-thirds since 2019 — and costs are hitting $45 million a month on programs.
Healey fired off a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Many of these families are migrants to Massachusetts, drawn here because we are and proudly have been a beacon to those in need,” she wrote in a letter to Mayorkas.
She also blamed “a confusing tangle of immigration laws, an inability for migrants to obtain work authorization from the federal government, an increase in the number of people coming to Massachusetts, and the lack of an affordable housing supply in our state.”
“Healey called for Mayorkas to press Congress and use executive action to remove barriers for work permits for migrants, ‘address our outdated and punitive immigration laws’ and to provide additional financial assistance to the state,” Fox News reports.
Massachusetts gov declares state of emergency due to surge of migrants, calls for federal action https://t.co/Nd9kmNwuHs #FoxNews
— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) August 8, 2023
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