The left-wing Boston Globe has finally begun to publish articles critical of Gov. Maura Healey (D-Mass.) and the disastrous “Healey Hotel” illegal immigrant shelter program.
That’s a major shift for a liberal media outlet that ignored the epidemic of drug crime, sexual assault, and domestic violence the program spawned for six months after the Maine Wire first exposed it in June 2024.
Fast forward to Jan. 2025, and New England’s largest newspaper is even publishing op-eds blasting Gov. Healey for actions that reek of a political cover-up.
Last June, the Maine Wire published an exclusive report based on inside sources and law enforcement records that showed Healey’s illegal alien hotel program had become a breeding ground for monstrous crimes, including underage sexual assaults.
Since that time, other outlets — mostly in the conservative media — have amplified the horrific details that continue to emerge, as more and more records related to the shelter program finally become public.
The negative attention seems to have led Healey to cave on many of the more radical elements of immigration policies, with the Bay State governor recently claiming that she now supports the deportation of criminal illegal aliens. That recent rhetoric contrasts sharply with Massachusetts’ longtime “sanctuary” policy that has led law enforcement to release criminal illegal aliens into the community rather than cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
The Globe began its critical coverage of the Healy Hotels’ crime epidemic in mid-December with the publication of an article titled “A Migrant Girl Was Allegedly Raped. Why Wasn’t an Arrest Made?”
The article detailed a harrowing incident of rape and incest, an incident the Globe ignored for six months after the Maine Wire published an investigative report on it in June.
Our report included hard evidence in the form of incident reports provided by a whistleblower showing the sorts of horrific incidents hidden by the Healey administration.
The Globe finally reported on the incident only after President-elect Donald Trump won the November election, and after they spoke with John Fetherston, the same whistleblower who reached out to the Maine Wire.
Fetherston served as the director of a shelter at a Holiday Inn in Marlborough, Massachusetts, from 2023 to 2024.
The report by The Maine Wire focused on that Holiday Inn and exposed multiple incidents of child sexual abuse.
In the most disturbing incident, one resident, Ronald Joseph, allegedly raped his 14-year-old daughter numerous times, both on the way from Mexico and while in the U.S., impregnating her.
Police arrived to calm Joseph down after he became belligerent upon learning he would lose custody of his daughter.
Police did not arrest Joseph; instead, he was given a taxpayer-funded Lyft ride to a different shelter in Worcester, Massachusetts, and he was not charged with any crime.
The Boston paper has reported on a few high-profile migrant shelter crimes before, such as the alleged rape of a minor by an illegal immigrant living in Rockland, Massachusetts, but has treated those crimes as isolated incidents, rather than indicative of trends with Healey’s shelter program overall.
The outlet even published an article denying that illegal immigrants have caused a surge in crime and criticizing Republicans for using the Rockland rape as evidence of the negative impact of open borders and welfare programs for illegal immigrants.
When the Globe finally got around to reporting on the alleged incestuous rape, even a staff columnist was critical of Healey’s immigrant hotels and her promise to keep Massachusetts a sanctuary state, despite the upcoming second Trump administration.
“If Massachusetts can’t provide safety despite all those efforts, and despite spending more than $1 billion in taxpayer money on the shelters, then perhaps the state is overextended and should stop making promises to provide sanctuary that it can’t — or won’t — honor just to keep up appearances against Donald Trump,” said Boston Globe opinion writer Carine Hajjar.
More recently, the Maine Wire has reviewed the thousands of pages of reports that, although heavily redacted, detail hundreds of serious incidents at the Healy Hotels and other shelters that house illegal immigrants.
They show a vivid pattern of criminality at the taxpayer funded hotels, including domestic violence, sexual abuse, destruction of property, drug crimes, and neglect of children, among other assorted crimes and bizarre behavior.
One woman living in the shelter system set off the smoke alarms and prompted a fire department response because she decided to simmer Fabuloso cleaner on her stovetop to make her unit smell better.
On Wednesday, the Globe finally arrived at the same conclusion readers of the Maine Wire would have reached in June.
The paper published another Hajjar column titled “Healey’s Shelter Cover-Up Unravels,” finally calling out their far-left governor for intentionally concealing serious crimes from the public and letting offenders go unpunished to preserve her public image.
“Healey could have done more, earlier,” said Hajjar in the article.
“She didn’t because it was easier to stay silent than admit the state government was in over its head and take the onerous steps required to protect migrants and residents,” she continued.
As media pressure on the governor has intensified, Healey has drastically changed her tone on the shelters and immigration policy generally.
In late December, federal authorities arrested Leonardo Andujar Sanchez, 28, a Dominican illegal immigrant staying at a repurposed Quality Inn in Revere, Mass.
Sanchez was allegedly in possession of five kilograms of fentanyl, along with an illegal assault rifle — more than $1 million in contraband at the taxpayer-funded flophouse.
In response to the drug and firearm arrest, on Jan. 1, Healey ordered inspections of all the shelters in the program and ordered a review of the shelter admissions process in an attempt to curtail future crimes.
Why Healey did not implement these measures in response to more egregious crimes, such as child rape, remains unclear. So does the future of the illegal alien shelter program that has become the signature policy of her time in office.
On the same day she promised to investigate crimes in the shelter system, Healey submitted a bill requesting an additional $425 million in taxpayer funding for the shelter system.
She expanded on her proposed changes to the shelter system on Wednesday, calling on lawmakers to drastically change the state’s “right to shelter” laws. Among other significant changes, she proposed making anyone who is not a Massachusetts resident ineligible for the shelter program.
Under the new laws, shelter applicants would be required to disclose prior criminal convictions and prove that every member of the household is in the U.S. legally.
Currently, applicants can enter a shelter before providing evidence that they are actually eligible for the program, but under the proposed changes, applicants will be required to provide evidence before they are admitted into the taxpayer-funded program.
“I believe these changes are appropriate and needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of the state shelter system in a way that aligns with the original intent of the law,” said Healey in a letter to the state legislature.
Her letter did not clarify whether non-Massachusetts residents already in the shelters would be removed if the changes go into effect.
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