MASS. MIGRANTS’ AIRPORT LOUNGE
Families shelter at Boston terminal
Dozens of migrant families have set up camp in Boston’s international airport as Massachusetts struggles to find shelter for the booming migrant population.
Nearly 100 people, including many children, have been sleeping on cots on the floor at Logan Airport’s international terminal in scenes eerily similar to those at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.
The migrants were huddled in hats and blankets as they lay next to piles of their belongings in footage taken by CBS Boston.
Massachusetts State Police officers are being paid overtime to patrol the area, Gov. Maura Healey said Monday — leaning on the federal government to do more to address the mess.
“We need DC to act. We need Congress to act,” she said when asked about the airport chaos.
“The path is there in terms of what needs to be done to fix the border situation, to change some of the asylum processes and to get much-needed funding to interior states who have had to shoulder the burden for a problem that is geopolitical and is not the state’s making,” she added.
Healey is asking President Biden for an additional $250 million to address the crisis — though her office estimates the surge in migrants could cost the state $915 million next year.
She has proposed paying for some of the aid with $700 million in state surplus funds and has previously declared a state of emergency in the Bay State.
The governor said at the time that 80% more migrants arrived by August than in the previous year.
The images of migrants sleeping at Logan International come just months after Massachusetts Port Authority Interim CEO Ed Freni warned that the airport is “not an appropriate place” for migrants to stay, as 20 to 25 were arriving at Logan each day in November.
The airport is often the first stop for migrants arriving from
Haiti and Latin America, Freni explained to CBS News.
“When they come to Logan, we meet them and we try to assist them, but we have to emphasize that Logan is not an appropriate place to house people,” Freni said at the time.
The state, however, is running out of options. It hit its capacity to house 7,500 families in emergency shelters in November, and is now putting families on a waitlist.
Some migrants are staying at local churches, while others are being housed in government conference rooms, according to public radio station WBUR.
A record-setting 276,000 asylum-seekers entered the US from Mexico in December 2023, capping a record-breaking year — and forcing Biden to admit that “massive changes” in US immigration policy are necessary.