Massachusetts senators say taxpayers are unfairly footing the bill for migrants using financial sponsors

A group of senators is urging Gov. Maura Healey to conduct a study of how many immigrant families receiving state financial assistance need a designated sponsor to cover those expenses. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)

A group of Massachusetts senators are asking the governor to review how many taxpayer-supported migrant families entered the United States on the condition that their expenses were covered by a sponsor, and to make those people pay.

Eleven state senators, led by Democrat Michael Moore and Republican Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, sent a letter to Gov. Maura Healey and Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities Edward Augustus demanding accountability for those who pledged to provide financial support to migrants under the federal humanitarian parole program, “but have failed to live up to that commitment.”

“With no action by the United States government to support communities that are providing housing, food, and support to migrant families during the recent immigration crisis, Massachusetts taxpayers have been left footing the bill,” Moore said in a statement Monday. “It is simply unfair for taxpayers to support individuals who are here under a program that requires, under penalty of perjury, that a specific person or organization commit to financially supporting them.”

In the letter, the lawmakers point to the steady influx of migrants that is straining the state’s overflowing emergency shelter system, as well as the roughly $1 billion the state was set to spend in fiscal 2024 and is seeking to budget in the new fiscal year that began Monday “to house, feed and support” the nearly 7,500 families — half of them migrants — in that shelter system.

The senators say some of these migrant families may have a financial sponsor and that the state, and by extension taxpayers, should not foot the bill for their stay in the United States.

Their letter calls on the Healey administration to collect statistical information on such cases and to seek reimbursement of public funds spent to support these individuals, expenses that “should have been covered by their financial sponsor.”

“We appreciate the pressure you have put on the federal government and remain hopeful that Congress will act,” the June 25 letter reads. “However, we also ask that you seek to hold accountable those who have legally committed to providing financial support to these migrants.”

Established by the Biden administration in January 2023, the Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans allows 30,000 nationals from those countries to live and work legally in the United States for two years. In exchange, applicants must obtain a financial sponsor to pay for housing, basic needs, paperwork, health care and schooling, Moore’s office said.

“Our immigration system must have integrity, and that includes transparency and accountability for commitments made to provide financial support,” Tarr said in a statement. “Ensuring that those who make these commitments follow through on those commitments not only ensures integrity, but also provides critical resources to such a painfully overburdened system.”

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Healey administration sent a five-person team to the southern Texas border to “educate” people about the shelter shortage in Massachusetts, and last week banned migrants from sleeping on the floor at Logan Airport, effective July 9.