The news of the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a 26-year-old man at a Rockland hotel sheltering migrant families rippled through the political world in Massachusetts, intensifying debate over the state’s policy of housing migrant families in hotels and motels, and bringing into question safety measures to protect them.
The suspect, Cory B. Alvarez, is being held without bail after pleading not guilty to a charge of child rape Thursday in Hingham District Court. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed an immigration detainer against him with the Plymouth County sheriff’s office, said a spokesman for the federal agency, James Covington. The procedure is used against noncitizens accused of a crime whom ICE wants to take into custody if they are released by local authorities.
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The charges were greeted with a sense of dread by immigration advocates and shelter providers whose efforts to provide temporary housing for the large number of migrants have been met by resistance in some communities.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, feared that “people will use this in the same way that they have used horrific incidents caused by other minority populations as an excuse to crack down on a minority population.”
As of Thursday, Massachusetts was providing housing for 7,531 families in its emergency shelter system, including nearly 3,900 in hotels or motels. Roughly half of the families in the system — not counting hundreds more on a wait list — entered the United States as migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, according to state data.
Governor Maura Healey defended the shelter program Friday, saying state officials are “deploying all that we can in terms of vetting individuals.”
Asked if the incident would prompt changes in security at the Rockland hotel or other places housing homeless and migrant families, Healey said Massachusetts already has “security and systems in place.”
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Covington on Friday confirmed that “Cory Bernard Alvarez” is a citizen of Haiti who “entered the United States lawfully June 26, 2023, through New York, New York.”
At an unrelated event in Worcester on Friday, Healey said Alvarez “was in the country under the federal program,” but didn’t specify whether it was through the Biden administration’s “CHNV” program, which allows certain immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to come to the United States for two years to live and work lawfully under what is known as “humanitarian parole.”
The Rockland site is among the hotels where the state had deployed National Guard members. A spokesperson for the state’s Executive Office of Housing said the office did not have details on how many hours a day Guard members are deployed there, but the hotel is required to provide “24/7 front desk staffing.”
However, advocates say migrants, especially women and girls, are particularly at risk and require better protection.
Any situation that places people in a position of less power makes them more vulnerable to sexual exploitation, said Hema Sarang-Sieminski, deputy director of Jane Doe Inc. Migrant women and girls in temporary shelters, who don’t speak English or are unfamiliar with the legal system here, are at particular risk, she said.
“Power dynamics are such a core factor behind sexual assault,” said Sarang-Sieminski, whose nonprofit advocates for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Isa Woldeguiorguis, executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, said many migrants who make the often treacherous journey to the United States experience sexual violence on the way. Then, they arrive “without community supports, without family supports,” she said — making them all the more vulnerable.
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Even for people who already live in the area, the region’s housing crisis is a factor in sexual violence because many don’t have a safe, permanent place to stay, she said. That’s doubly the case for migrants, as they are typically staying in places not meant to be permanent housing, Woldeguiorguis said.
The incident is likely to inflame already heightened political tensions around the large number of new arrivals to the state and the subsequent strain on the emergency shelter system. It also thrust Massachusetts into the national spotlight, handing anti-immigrant forces a potential talking point. Immigration and, specifically, the record numbers of migrants crossing the Southern US border, have emerged as dominant issues in the 2024 presidential race. The Republican standard bearer, Donald Trump, and much of the party have embraced a hard-line position on immigration, and characterize many new arrivals broadly as criminals.
On Friday, Trump’s presidential campaign blasted Fox News coverage of it to supporters.
The American Immigration Council, which is a national nonpartisan organization and advocate for immigration reform, published a report in 2015 that found, like others, immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than native-born residents.
The report also found a high rate of immigration is associated with lower incidents of violent crime and property crime.
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A similar 2020 study in Texas found immigrants to the United States, whether here legally or illegally, are convicted of crimes at lower rates than US citizens. And one study last year found immigrants are incarcerated at lower rates than people born in the US, though Mexican and Central American immigrants are locked up at higher rates, similar to American-born whites, largely due to immigration-related offenses.
“Immigrants in general commit less crimes because they understand that their status could be taken away from them,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “Individual — even horrific acts — of the few that do commit crimes, shouldn’t be used to override the core fact of what the data shows.”
While emergency shelters across the state have always required some element of security, the heightened public scrutiny of new arrivals has created a more urgent need.
“There are incidents that happen in every residential setting for all populations who are being served,” said Larry Seamans, chief executive of Boston-based FamilyAid, which provides shelter to hundreds of families in Greater Boston. “The question really is how to best mitigate them.”
Pastor Dieufort Fleurissaint, a Haitian community activist better known as “Pastor Keke,” said in addition to more security, another way for migrants to become less vulnerable to exploitation is to give them skills to succeed here. That means job training, English lessons, and programs for children.
“We need to have the resources in place,” he said.
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On Friday, Fleurissaint said he’d just been at the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex, the site of an overflow shelter in Roxbury, to hear about measures in place to keep migrants safe. While he was there, he said, he preached patience.
“I spoke to them to respect themselves and respect the rules,” he said.
Meshach Little, who works as a security guard at there, echoed the sentiment, adding that his mandate is to “keep an eye on the crowd” by walking the indoor track around the field house where hundreds of migrants sleep on cots. More security may keep wrongdoing from happening, he said, but that “you never know when someone is going to do something like” assaulting a teenager.
“I think things like that are almost impossible to prepare for,” Little said. “You can’t know if that could happen until it does.”
John R. Ellement and Victoria McGrane of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross. Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout. Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter. Esmy Jimenez can be reached at esmy.jimenez@globe.com. Follow her @esmyjimenez.