The former director of a Massachusetts migrant shelter exposed the chaos, violence, rape, and wasteful spending that haunt these shelters in an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire.
Jon Fetherston, who managed a hotel-turned-migrant shelter in Marlborough, Massachusetts, from November 2023 to July 2024, said he took the job to assist people in need. However, he soon observed how Massachusetts’ Right to Shelter law — which mandates that the state provide housing and necessities to homeless families with children or pregnant women — led to an overwhelming influx of migrants, turning once-functional hotels into unsafe environments.
A man who ran a Massachusetts hotel that was turned into a migrant shelter says it was plagued by violence, rape, and wasteful spending.
He blames the state’s governor Maura Healey for what he calls “Healey Hotels.”
Watch his exclusive interview with reporter @KassyAkiva: pic.twitter.com/g8jKPSqxQE
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) December 5, 2024
“There was a lot of violence,” Fetherston recalled. “Unfortunately there was a gentleman in the hotel that impregnated his own daughter and got very violent when the state removed her from the shelter.”
In June, The Maine Wire published an exposé on the migrant shelter at a Holiday Inn, where Fetherston was working to support over 550 people. It detailed the situation Fetherston referenced regarding a 14-year-old girl who was allegedly raped multiple times and impregnated by her father, Ronald Joseph.
“[Department of Children and Families] then conducted an interview with [the victim] who reported that her father has had sex with her multiple times, both on the journey to the U.S. and in the U.S. DCF then made the decision to remove [the victim] from her father’s custody on an emergency basis,” the document obtained by the Maine Wire states.
Instead of being arrested, records show Joseph was given a taxpayer-funded Lyft ride to another shelter in Worcester, Massachusetts, after he started yelling and making threatening gestures at the shelter staff.
“They had me send them to Worcester County,” Fetherston said.” And I, for the life of me, don’t understand why he wasn’t locked up. A man who admits he committed rape, you’re just going to put in another shelter so he can rape again another day? It makes no sense.”
Police were reportedly alerted about Joseph after the incident.
In another situation, a local school asked Fetherston to check on a female student who seemed distressed.
“It turned out that the girl claimed that one of the residents of the shelter was actively raping her on a pretty consistent basis,” Fetherston said. “I immediately stopped and we called the police. The police came in, brought in detectives.”
Fetherston said the girl did not immediately tell the police the same story, and instead claimed the man was her boyfriend. But, days later, she asked to be taken to the police station.
“After a couple of days, she changed her mind so I personally put her in my car with the family and I drove her to the police station,” Fetherston said. “She told the police officer that she was raped multiple times. It was probably the most disturbing conversation I’ve ever heard in my adult life.”
Fetherston then took the girl to get a restraining order. The man, identified by the Maine Wire as 29-year-old Gladimy Rodene, reportedly sexually assaulted another girl, according to a report from a security guard recounting a statement from the original victim.
Rodene was arrested and removed from the shelter and was reportedly issued an abuse prevention order, according to the Maine Wire.
It is unclear if either individual was charged by local officials. A spokeswoman for ICE told The Daily Wire that they do not have a detainer on either of the individuals.
In August, the Boston Globe reported a pregnant woman was allegedly raped and assaulted at a different hotel shelter in July by a Haitian national.
Other violent altercations also took place between migrants residing at the hotel, including one situation where a woman threw hot soup at another woman.
“I witnessed one of the women throwing hot soup at the other during a dispute over the microwave,” a report by a security guard states. “After a few minutes of yelling, Jon intervened again, warning that he would remove the microwaves if the altercation continued.”
[SCREENSHOT OF SOUP REPORT]
In another instance, a migrant drove a car into Fetherston’s office, knocking him off his chair, in what he claims was a retaliation for refusing to hand out diapers to migrants on government benefits.
“If you were receiving benefits and you were receiving those, then we were going to start scaling back on providing diapers, formula and wipes,” Fetherston said. “That did not go over well with the migrants. They thought that they were being attacked. A gentleman then drove his car into my office.”
The car crash was reported in local media, but it was not publicly reported that the migrant drove into the shelter on purpose, though Fetherston said he was told by other residents it was.
Fetherston said his daily tasks included assisting migrants with enrolling in social services like food stamps and government health insurance, ensuring they received three meals a day from catering companies, and purchasing essential items such as toiletries, diapers, strollers, cribs, formula, and baby wipes. He also coordinated state-paid, same-day dry cleaning for the migrants and arranged Uber rides to work when needed.
“They maybe have two days’ worth of clothing on them and they have no toiletries, they don’t have any IDs, they don’t have anything,” Fetherston said. “The state contract was that you provide everything that they would need. So a lot of the days you spent ordering.”
Fetherston said he doesn’t fault the migrants for coming to Massachusetts to get free handouts, but Gov. Maura Healey for mismanaging the crisis which has led to as many as 3,832 migrant families using shelters, which Fetherston calls “Healey Hotels.”
“The governor had let it be known that Massachusetts was a safe haven for migrants to come to,” Fetherston said. “She now will call the migrants residents and they’re not residents. Most of them are here seeking asylum protection, but I certainly wouldn’t call them residents.”
Fetherston, who said he was given an Amazon budget and other accounts to buy necessities with the migrants with no spending cap, says the cost of the migrant program is immeasurable.
“What does it cost for a public education teacher to say, listen, I’m not getting the help and the services that I need to take care of my classroom? I’m just going to retire. What is the price of a senior police officer in a local police department says, I don’t need this. I don’t need this aggravation in my life. I’m going to leave. You can’t even put a dollar figure on what it’s costing these communities to replace a good teacher or replace a good police officer.”
Incoming Trump administration border czar, Tom Homan, said that Massachusetts will be a “huge focal point when it comes to mass deportations” last month, following several state leaders — including Healey — saying they would not assist federal immigration enforcement agents.
“So I think the key here is that, you know, every tool in the toolbox has got to be used to protect our citizens, to protect our residents and protect our states and to hold the line on democracy and the rule of law as a basic principle,” Healey said on MSNBC last month.
Fetherston said he hopes Healey changes course and cooperates with the Trump administration on deporting criminal migrants.
“Governor Healey’s hatred of Donald Trump has blinded her so badly that she has put the risk [sic] of every child and woman in the state of Massachusetts,” Fetherston said. “I don’t understand this. I lose sleep over it.”
U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement and the Marlborough Police did not respond to requests for comment. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities declined to comment.