Northeast
Child rape and violent incidents reported at Massachusetts migrant shelters, former facility director says
A former director at a Massachusetts migrant shelter is speaking out against what he says were incidents of widespread violence, child sexual assault and rape at shelters in the state, including an incident where a father impregnated his 14-year-old daughter.
Massachusetts, a sanctuary state, has been one of a number of states that have been overwhelmed by the migrant surge coming from the southern border.
The state has spent nearly $1.1 billion of taxpayers’ money this fiscal year to house and feed the border crossers who have often been placed in hotels converted into shelters.
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Meshach Little of Northill Wilkston Security Firm walks the perimeter of the main living area at the state’s new emergency overflow shelter for migrants at the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex. (Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
One such migrant shelter in Marlborough, Massachusetts, was managed by Jon Fetherston from November 2023 to July 2024, who painted a chaotic picture of his time there with violence, wasteful spending and rape.
“There was a lot of violence,” Fetherston told The Daily Wire of the crowded 550-person shelter at Holiday Inn at 265 Lakeside Ave. “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.”
A Maine Wire report from June appears to corroborate the claim, reporting that illegal immigrant Ronald Joseph allegedly raped his 14-year-old daughter numerous times on the journey to the U.S. — both before and after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Dept. of Children and Families (DcF) interviewed the young girl before making the decision to remove her from her father’s custody on an emergency basis,” the document obtained by The Maine Wire states.
Illegal migrants line the floors of a terminal at Boston Logan Airport as Massachusetts’ shelters are overrun. (WBZ)
Joseph was then given a taxpayer-funded Lyft ride to another shelter in Worcester, Massachusetts, after he started yelling and making threatening gestures at the shelter staff, The Maine Wire reports, citing Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) records.
“They had me send them to Worcester County,” Fetherston told the Daily Wire. “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.”
That shelter is also paid for by taxpayers and residents receive the full slate of benefits while staying there, according to The Maine Wire, which reports that the official report did not recommend that any criminal charges should be brought against Joseph.
In another disturbing incident, Fetherston says that a 16-year-old female student says she was raped multiple times by a 29-year-old man.
“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 told the Daily Wire.
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Cory Bernard Alvarez is accused of aggravated rape of a 15-year-old child in a Rockland migrant shelter. (ICE)
The man, identified as Gladimy Rodene by The Maine Wire, was arrested, removed from the shelter and was reportedly issued an abuse prevention order, which forbade him from approaching the Marlborough Holiday Inn or the local High School where his victim is a student.
Rodene reportedly sexually assaulted another girl, according to the Daily Wire, citing a report from a security guard recounting a statement from the original victim.
A spokesperson for ICE told The Daily Wire that they do not have a detainer on either of the individuals.
In another violent incident at a Massachusetts shelter, a pregnant woman was allegedly raped and assaulted at a different hotel shelter in July by 34-year-old Haitian national Marc Kervens Beauvais, per the Boston Globe.
In August, ICE says it arrested 26-year-old Haitian national Cory Bernard Alvarez, accused of aggravated rape of a 15-year-old child in a Rockland migrant shelter.
Fetherston also spoke about migrants fighting over microwave access and in one incident, a migrant drove a car into Fetherston’s office, knocking him off his chair, in what he claims was 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.”
Fetherston told the Daily Wire that his daily tasks included assisting migrants with enrolling in social services like food stamps and government health insurance. The migrants were given three meals a day from catering companies, and he purchased essential items such as toiletries, diapers, strollers and baby wipes for them.
He also coordinated state-paid, same-day dry cleaning for the migrants and arranged Uber rides to work when needed. He added he was given an Amazon budget and other accounts to buy necessities for the migrants with no spending cap.
“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 told The Daily Wire. “The state contract was that you provide everything that they would need. So a lot of the days you spent ordering.”
The news comes as Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has said that her state police will “absolutely not” be cooperating with the expected mass deportation effort by the incoming Trump administration, warning that she will use “every tool in the toolbox” to “protect” residents in the blue state.
President-elect Trump has pledged to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” to deport millions of illegal immigrants. One report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) estimated 50,000 migrants have arrived in the state since 2021.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has said that her state police will “absolutely not” be cooperating with the expected mass deportation effort by the incoming Trump administration, warning that she will use “every tool in the toolbox” to “protect” residents in the blue state. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
“I do think it is important that we all recognize that there is going to be a lot of pressure on states and state officials. I can assure you we’re going to work hard to deliver,” Healey said following President-elect Trump’s resounding election win last month.
Last year, Healey declared a state of emergency in the state due to the surge and called for federal action. She also acknowledged that the state’s policies may be a draw for migrants.
“Many of these families are migrants to Massachusetts, drawn here because we are and proudly have been a beacon to those in need,” she wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
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Northeast
Family claims casino staff mistook veteran’s illness for intoxication, delaying care before his death
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A “proud veteran of the U.S. Army” died after suffering a medical emergency while visiting Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip, where, according to a lawsuit, employees and security guards allegedly “presumed, incorrectly” that he was drunk and called him an Uber instead of seeking medical help.
According to a wrongful-death complaint obtained by the Las Vegas Review Journal, 64-year-old Gary Perrin was gambling at Caesars Palace in November 2024 when he began exhibiting “visible signs” of an undisclosed illness. The symptoms allegedly included “sudden onset of sweating, double vision, dizziness and vomiting.”
“Due to, but not limited to, a lack of training, a lack of supervision, laziness, being overworked and tired, profiling, and or a lack of policies and procedures, it was presumed, incorrectly, that Perrin was intoxicated,” the complaint read.
U.S. Army veteran Gary Perrin’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Caesars Palace, claiming casino workers allegedly failed to provide medical attention in November 2024. (Care Cremation & Burial )
Workers decided to “call an Uber/Lyft instead of onsite paramedics or EMR transport” for Perrin, leading to a “critical delay of medical care that ultimately led to, caused, or contributed substantially to his death” weeks later, the lawsuit claimed.
Perrin’s family said that the casino had knowledge of the victim’s serious illness, and yet “did not render immediate and/or reasonable medical attention nor did they take steps to call for medical attention.”
Caesars Palace hotel and casino in Las Vegas. (Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In the lawsuit, Perrin’s family did not disclose how he died but said the employees’ decision to call a rideshare over an ambulance allegedly led to “severe injuries, including but not limited [to] surgical scars and disfigurement, pain and suffering, and loss of life.”
His family is seeking $15,000 from the iconic Las Vegas strip resort, according to the lawsuit.
Aerial view of Las Vegas Strip. A 64-year-old U.S. Army veteran died after suffering a medical emergency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where a lawsuit alleges staff mistakenly presumed he was drunk and called a rideshare instead of paramedics. (iStock)
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An obituary for Perrin describes him as a proud veteran who served for four years and then worked for UPS.
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He retired from the shipping company after 29 years of “dedicated service,” then worked as an assistant to the dean of students and football coach at Goffstown High School in New Hampshire. In his later years, he also worked as a driver at the Maher Center in Middletown, Rhode Island, until his death.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Caesars for comment.
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How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Sara Robinson boarded a Greyhound bus from Oregon to New York City to attend Hunter College in the early 2000s, bright-eyed and eager to pick up odd jobs to fuel her dream of living there.
For a long time, she made it work. But recently, that has been more challenging than ever.
Right around her 40th birthday, Ms. Robinson began to feel financially squeezed in Brooklyn, where she had lived for years. Ms. Robinson (no relation to this reporter) was also feeling too grown to live with roommates.
“As a child,” she said, “you don’t think you’re going to have a roommate at 40.” She decided to move into a place of her own: a one-bedroom apartment in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island.
After she moved, the preschool where she’d worked for over a decade closed. Now, she works two jobs. She is a seasonal employee for the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, working from Tuesday to Saturday. And on Monday nights, she sells concessions at the West Village movie theater Film Forum, which pays $25 an hour plus tips.
Ms. Robinson, now 45, loves her job as an environmental educator at a state park on Staten Island. Her team runs the park’s social media accounts and comes up with event programming, like a recent project tapping maple trees to make syrup.
But the role is temporary. Her last stint was from June 2024 to January 2025. Then she was unemployed until August 2025. Ms. Robinson’s current contract will be up in April, unless she gets an extension or a different parks job opens up.
Ms. Robinson’s biweekly pay stubs from the parks department amount to about $1,300 before taxes. She barely felt a difference, she said, while she was out of work and pocketing around $880 every two weeks from her unemployment checks. (Her previous parks gig paid $1,100 a check.)
Living in New York’s Greenest Borough
“It used to be, ‘There’s no way I’m moving to Staten Island,’” Ms. Robinson said. “But the place is close to the water. I’m three minutes from the ferry. The rest is history.” She lives on the third floor of a multifamily house, above an art studio and another tenant. Her rent is $1,600 a month, plus $125 in utilities, including her phone bill.
“If my situation changes, I don’t know if I could find something similar,” she said. “So much of my New York life has been feeling trapped to an apartment. You get a place for a good price, and you’re like, ‘I can’t leave now.’”
Staten Island is convenient for Ms. Robinson’s parks job, but it’s become harder to justify living in a borough where she knows few people. It takes more than an hour to get to friends in Brooklyn, an especially hard trek during the winter. After four years of living on Staten Island, Ms. Robinson feels somewhat isolated.
“All my friends on Staten Island are senior citizens,” she said. “It’s great. I love it. But I do want friends closer to my age.”
One of Ms. Robinson’s friends, Ray, took her on nature walks and taught her about tree identification, sparking an interest in mycology, the study of mushrooms. This led to a productive — and free — fungi foraging hobby during unemployment. She has found all sorts of mushrooms, including, after a month of searching, the elusive morel.
The Budgeting Game
Ms. Robinson doesn’t update her furniture often, but when she does, she shops stoop sales in Park Slope or other parts of Brooklyn.
“It’s like a treasure hunt,” she said. “You could make a whole apartment off the street, off the stuff that people throw away.”
She also makes a game out of grocery shopping, biking to Sunset Park in Brooklyn or Manhattan’s Chinatown to go to stores where there are better deals. She budgets about $300 for groceries each month.
Ms. Robinson bikes almost everywhere, sometimes traveling a little farther to enter the Staten Island Railway at one of the stations that don’t charge a fare. She spends $80 a month on subway and ferry fares, and $5 a month for a discounted Citi Bike membership she gets through a credit union, though she usually uses her own bike. She is handy and does repairs herself.
There are certain splurges — Ms. Robinson drops $400 once or twice a year on round-trip airfare to Seattle, where her family lives. She also spent $100 last year to see a concert at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.
She said she has many financial saving graces. She has no student loans and no car to make payments on. She doesn’t get health insurance from her jobs, but she qualifies for Medicaid.
She mostly eats at home, though sometimes friends will treat her to dinner. She repays them with tickets to Film Forum movies.
Nothing Beats the Twinkling Lights
Ms. Robinson’s friends often talk about leaving the city — and the country.
Two friends have their eyes set on Sweden, where they hope to get the affordable child care and social safety net they are struggling to access in New York.
Ms. Robinson can’t see herself moving elsewhere in the United States, but she is entertaining the idea of an international move if she can’t hack it on Staten Island.
Yet the pull of the city is hard for her to resist.
“I just get a rush when I’m riding the Staten Island Ferry across the bay,” she said. “You see all the little twinkling lights. It’s this feeling of, ‘everything is possible here.’”
That feeling, plus the many friendly faces Ms. Robinson sees every day — the ferry operators, the conductors on the Staten Island Railway, her co-workers at Film Forum — are what tie her to New York.
“My savings are not increasing, so there’s that,” she said. “But I’ve been OK so far. I think I’m going to figure it out.”
Applause and music echoed through the Hall of Flags at the Massachusetts State House Friday as lawmakers and community leaders gathered for the Black Excellence on the Hill and the Latino Excellence Awards.
The ceremony celebrates Black and brown residents committed to advancing economic equity.
“We’re honoring Black excellence,” said state Rep. Chris Worrell. “When we look at today, this is what it should look like. This is our house. Black people built this house, literally and figuratively.”
Honorees ranged from attorneys to former professional athletes. Nicole M. Bluefort of the Law Offices of Nicole Bluefort said she plans to use her platform to uplift others.
“I will use my advocacy skills as an attorney to move people forward,” she said.
Former NBA player Wayne Seldan Jr. talked about his journey from McDonald’s All American to a full scholarship at Kansas and a professional career.
“You always want to keep striving for continued betterment and for stuff to grow,” he said. “I don’t think there should be mountaintops. I think we should always be striving to keep building.”
The keynote address was delivered by Michelle Brown, mother of Jaylen Brown, who spoke about raising two children as a single mother and the importance of faith, discipline and education.
“There are no shortcuts. There are no guarantees,” she said. “There was faith, there was discipline, and there was a deep belief that education created mobility.”
Speakers emphasized that mobility is strengthened when communities work together for a common good. Bluefort highlighted the importance of mentorship and shared opportunity, while state Rep. Sally Kerans encouraged attendees to stand together across racial lines.
“In this moment, stand with others. Speak up. Don’t be afraid to say ‘That’s not normal.’ Be allies. Be supportive,” Kerans said.
Organizers said the ceremony was not only about recognition, but also about sustaining progress — encouraging leaders and residents alike to continue building toward a more equitable future.
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