Migrant families return to Logan after state tightens restrictions on shelter stays
A group of about a dozen migrants, including young children, tried to spend the night at Logan Airport this week.
September 19, 2024
A group of migrants who recently arrived in Massachusetts reportedly spent the night at Logan Airport this week, despite the state’s restriction on staying overnight there.
A group of about a dozen Haitian migrants, some of whom have recently traveled to New England from Chile, looked for a space to stay Monday night. The group included young children. Some gathered inside Terminal A, The Boston Globe reported, while others slept just outside the terminal.
The families were impacted by an ongoing Red Line shutdown and said that they were also influenced by state rules that apparently discouraged them from staying in overflow shelters.
“When you get to a country that you don’t know how it is, and end up in a circumstance like this, you get pretty worried,” one of the migrants, Enel Louis, told the Globe. “For me, it concerns me a lot seeing [my daughter] sleep in this situation.”
Louis, his wife, and their 6-year-old daughter arrived in Boston last week. They had been staying with a friend before being forced to find another solution. On Monday, his wife and daughter slept on the floor using a towel to keep warm, per the Globe.
Due to the housing affordability crisis in Massachusetts and a surge in immigration, the state’s emergency shelter system became severely overburdened in recent years. It reached capacity last fall, prompting a series of overflow sites to open around the state. But Gov. Maura Healey’s administration imposed new rules in July that included a five-day limit on how long families can stay in overflow sites.
Those that choose to stay in the overflow sites, now dubbed “respite centers,” are required to wait six months or more for placement in the state’s emergency family shelter system proper. Some of the migrants staying at Logan told the Globe that they had purposefully refused to stay at an overflow site because they did not want their prospects of securing a longer-term stay at a shelter to be hindered.
Many families, including those who showed up at Logan on Monday, have been utilizing a Family Welcome Center in Quincy. These centers provide resources for newly-arrived migrants, but do not have overnight shelter beds. Shuttle services have been bringing migrants from the Quincy center to the nearby Wollaston MBTA station. Dozens have spent nights there.
But that portion of the Red Line is shut down through Sept. 29 for track repair work. State officials say that, due to that shutdown, shuttles from the Welcome Center in Quincy are bringing people to South Station, which can connect them with a variety of transportation options.
The families interviewed by the Globe Monday night said that they had arrived at South Station and been told by police that they could not sleep there. So they took Silver Line buses to Logan.
A group arrived at the airport around 10:40 p.m. Monday, and some attempted to hide behind a display because they knew that sleeping inside the terminal was forbidden, a Massachusetts Port Authority spokesperson told the paper.
Migrants were consistently sleeping in Logan until early July, after Healey declared that it would no longer be allowed. Those staying at the airport at the time were offered transportation to overflow shelter sites.
The state later capped overflow shelter stays and tied restrictions on applying for longer-term stays to whether or not someone had used an overflow site. That move prompted fierce backlash from advocates and some officials. Demonstrators gathered on Boston Common on Monday to protest the rules. A crowd carrying signs with messages like “putting children on the street is NOT a solution” rallied near the Embrace statue.
“Nothing is stable now. Sleeping on the T is not stable,” Boston City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune said at the demonstration.
The Healey administration reiterated that families are not allowed to sleep at Logan, and the Massachusetts Port Authority said staff at the airport will be told to be more vigilant.
Judy Wolberg, a volunteer from the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network, told the Globe that the restrictions put in place on overflow shelter stays and the accompanying six-month restriction on applying for longer-term stays was “punitive.”
“What are they waiting for? Are they waiting for a tragedy?” she told the paper. “It’s very unstable, it’s very vulnerable.”