Massachusetts governor calls for National Guard amid blue state’s growing upheaval over migrants

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D.) mobilized her state’s National Guard on Thursday in response to the influx of migrants.
Up to 250 members of the Massachusetts National Guard will attend to local shelters and hotels, where thousands of migrant families have been staying. Healey earlier this month declared a state of emergency due to the strain on the shelter system.

Healey joined a growing number of Democratic leaders, including in New York, New Jersey, Colorado and Washington, D.C., who have taken more aggressive approaches to immigration as their jurisdictions have struggled to accommodate record numbers of migrants that entered the country during the Joe Biden period. presidency

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D.), who previously pledged that his state would be a “sanctuary” for migrants, suggested on Thursday it was not ready to take in migrants from neighboring New York.

“You need scale, [an] an enormous amount of federal support, resources beyond anything we can afford,” Murphy said of taking in migrants. “Everything else aside, I just don’t see it.”

Prominent business and community leaders in New York City earlier this week written a letter to the Biden administration demanding stepped-up federal action to control the border and offset the costs of the migrant crisis. Meanwhile, attempts to relocate migrants to different New York City neighborhoods have been met with protests from residents.

Illegal border crossings by migrant families achieved a record high in August, the Washington Post reported Thursday, based on preliminary data. CBS News reported Thursday that fewer than 100 deportations have taken place under a program the Biden administration established in May to deter illegal entries by migrant families.

In activating the Massachusetts National Guard, Healey attributed his state’s migrant problems to “a confusing confusion of immigration laws, the inability of migrants to obtain work authorization from the federal government, an increase in the number of people coming to Massachusetts and the lack of affordable housing in our state.”