An inspection of hotels and motels serving as state-run shelters for migrants and locals that Gov. Maura Healey ordered this month did not turn up any major issues or criminal activity, her office said in a statement to the Herald Friday.
Healey ordered the review of state-run emergency assistance shelters after a Dominican man who was unlawfully in the United States was arrested at Revere shelter with an AR-15 and an alleged fentanyl stash worth $1 million. The incident sparked security concerns for shelters.
A spokesperson for Healey said officials completed the inspection of all hotels and congregate sites and no “major” issues or criminal activity were identified. Officials are still conducting weekly room inspections, according to Healey’s office.
Providers are also still performing inspections of scattered shelter sites, which the spokesperson said are expected to be completed by the end of January. No major issues or criminal activity has so far been identified in those checks, the spokesperson said.
The inspections came after police arrested Leonardo Andujar Sanchez of the Dominican Republic for allegedly possessing five kilos of fentanyl and an assault rifle. Federal officials have said he unlawfully entered the country through an unknown location on an unknown date.
Days after initially ordering the inspection, the Healey administration made public a trove of documents that detailed more than 1,000 serious incidents reported at shelters, including disturbing details about allegations of physical and sexual assault, rape, and domestic violence.
Healey then faced criticism for a lack of widespread criminal background checks against the criminal offender record information database for all residents in the shelter system, though at least one top House Democrat has since questioned whether CORI checks are useful to use on migrants.
The first-term Democrat said she gave a verbal directive in April 2024 to the state’s housing department to conduct CORI checks for all residents at all emergency assistance shelters but was later told they were not happening.
The governor’s office did not provide any documents, emails, written memorandums, or other physical evidence to back up the verbal directive in response to an inquiry from the Herald.
State regulations do not require CORI checks, which have always occurred for people entering overflow shelters, but Healey ordered them for all sites after the blowback and has also called on Beacon Hill lawmakers to approve a series of shelter restrictions that would keep out migrants.
