The Cambridge Health Alliance is working to protect immigrants in its service area, including its patients, its own employees and their families, from threats of deportations and promises of harsher policies when president-elect Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20. Meanwhile, the state has closed an emergency overflow shelter in East Cambridge that had housed new arrivals and other homeless families for about a year.
The 200-bed shelter opened Dec. 22, 2023, in the Registry of Deeds building on Cambridge Street, using empty space left when the Middlesex County Probate and Family Court moved out of the building to Woburn. It was meant to be a short-term home for families, mostly migrants from Haiti seeking asylum, but many stayed for weeks because of difficulty finding affordable housing.
State workers had found homes for all but four families when the shelter closed last month, said Kevin Connor, spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. “Those families were transferred to an equivalent [shelter] in Chelsea,” he said.
Closing the Cambridge facility is part of a substantial change the state made last month in handling the extraordinary increase in demand from migrants seeking refuge from conflict, poverty and persecution. Although Massachusetts guarantees shelter to families, it has whittled away at that promise by setting time limits and other requirements as it contends with the huge cost of providing a place to sleep for thousands of families.
The state hopes to reduce dependence on hotels and shelter beds, according to an explanation of the new system presented to the Alliance’s advisory committee on population health Dec. 19. One of the changes increases the amount of rent assistance in its HomeBase program that helps lower-income tenants eligible for emergency shelter get housing; some families in the Cambridge shelter obtained apartment leases with HomeBase and were waiting for the state to finish processing their benefit last fall.
Preparing to meet threats
As for CHA, it has established a task force to develop policies and actions responding to Trump’s announced plans, said chief community officer Doug Kress, head of its community health improvement department, at the Dec. 19 committee meeting. The department’s community health workers, who help link underserved communities such as immigrants to Alliance services and medical care and promote healthy behavior, are working in migrant shelters, he said.
The Alliance also sent volunteers to a campaign by the Mira Coalition to help Haitians and other eligible migrants apply for temporary protected status, a government program that allows arrivals from certain countries affected by disasters to stay here and work legally for a limited amount of time.
Trump has threatened to end that status. “The hope is that people who are here, if they file a TPS application, that may protect them for the next two years,” said Lori Lander, an Alliance trustee who heads the advisory committee. Lander is also a community activist who has organized volunteers and sits on the board of the Cambridge Community Foundation.
The temporary protected status also protects Ukrainian and Afghan migrants, Lander said.
“We don’t know”
Trump has said he will carry out mass deportations and Kress singled out a threat to reverse some protections he provided in his first presidency, such as forbidding immigration enforcement actions in schools, houses of worship and health care sites.
“He’s now saying he will rescind those policies,” Kress said. “But we don’t know.”
It leads to anxiety that extends to Alliance employees. ”There is a lot of concern among providers,” and those employees are worried about their family members, deputy chief community officer Roberta Turri Vise said.
During the first term of Trump and his staff, “the chilling effect [of threatened action against immigrants] was much more impactful than the actual policies they passed,” Kress said. For example, one reaction was “people not going to school because they were afraid ICE would be there,” he said, referring to the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Know your rights
Kress pointed out that “sanctuary cities” such as Cambridge, where officials said they would refuse to cooperate with ICE or identify undocumented immigrants, were threatened with loss of federal funds. Yet that order was appealed and no sanctuary city ever lost federal aid, as far as Kress or experts know, according to a presentation by Kress.
Health care organizations that serve migrants and the immigrants themselves should know their rights, the presentation said. Organizations don’t have to allow ICE agents to enter or search patient records unless the authorities have a valid judicial warrant; individuals can refuse to answer the door, can remain silent and can have a lawyer.
The Alliance is considering posting information for immigrants in a special section of its website. The task force will review policies and will coordinate actions, the presentation said.
Despite the desire to help, “CHA is a health care institution. There are limitations on what we can do, but we do work with this population and live in the community,” Kress said.
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