By Milena Rovchanin
Boston University News Service
The cost of the state’s emergency assistance shelter system and who should be eligible to receive state supported housing is a central area of disagreement between two members of the Cape and Islands legislative delegation.
Rep. Steven Xiarhos, R-Barnstable, said priority should go to Massachusetts residents and then only to immigrants in the country legally and who are not facing detainers issued by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, counters the Cape’s housing shortage and the influx of immigrants with legal status requires a more generous approach to providing for the homeless families and pregnant women as envisioned by the state’s right-to-shelter law.
A House-Senate conference committee is working out differences between separate versions of legislation that would appropriate $425 million to fund the EA shelter system through the end of the June, while also tightening eligibility requirements and putting in to place capacity limits.
Currently Cape Cod has five EA shelters: two in Hyannis, one in Falmouth, one in Bourne and one in Mashpee. No hotels or motels are being used for shelters on the Cape, unlike other parts of the state.
Cyr, who voted for the Senate’s supplemental budget proposal, attributed the steady increase in the number of unhoused families in Massachusetts to two factors.
Massachusetts is about 220,000 housing units short, he said. The second is influx in new arrivals, largely people with legal status to be in the U.S., the majority of whom are Haitians with Temporary Protective Status as a result of political instability in their homeland.
Massachusetts has the third largest Haitian population in the country, after Miami and New York City.
“Cape Cod has become more and more unaffordable, we’re increasingly reliant on an immigrant workforce,” he said.
While acknowledging the financial strain, Cyr said “this is the program that has always been funded from the budget, but the costs are significantly higher than they typically are. We haven’t cut any programs across the state government to continue to fund the EA program.”
Cyr also said: “But what we’re trying to do is to work towards a sustainable EA shelter program that operates within our fiscal constraints and is everything we can to keep families with small children from sleeping on the streets.”
Xiarhos, who opposed the House-passed plan, instead backed Republican amendments to reduce funding to $200 million, require universal background checks for shelter applicants, and allow state and local officials to honor ICE civil detainer requests.
A civil detainer is a formal request to local law enforcement to hold an individual for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release. These requests target undocumented individuals, visa overstays, legal immigrants with certain criminal convictions and those flagged in ICE’s database.
Even though only legal migrants and eligible families can access Massachusetts’ emergency shelter program, Xiarhos said the amendments were aimed at anyone with past immigration violations or arrests for any reason.
“As a former deputy police chief I can attest to how important it is for state and local law enforcement to cooperate with federal counterparts in the name of public safety,” Xiarhos said. “Recently we have seen cases where migrants accused of serious crimes – including forcibly rape of children – have been released from custody notwithstanding valid ICE detainer requests. This is incredibly dangerous, offensive to Massachusetts residents, and completely unacceptable.”
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2017 that local and state law enforcement cannot hold a person to comply with ICE requests That ruling was applauded by immigration advocates who argued against efforts to change the law, declaring, “not only would it undermine public safety by causing residents to fear their local police; it would invite costly and unnecessary litigation about its constitutionality.”
ACLU Legal Director Matt Segal highlighted the impact of ICE detainer policies on legal representation.
Segal said: “Beyond the immense human impact, enforcing ICE detainers has a substantial effect on client representation by blocking attorneys from meeting constitutional and ethical obligations to defend their clients.”
This story originally appeared in the Cape Cod Times.
(This story was updated to accurately reflect the most current information.)
