At a church where they had been staying on Martha’s Vineyard, migrants cheered Friday morning when they heard the Massachusetts government would shelter them at the Cape Cod military base. They boarded government-arranged buses willingly, officials said, and they arrived at the military installation Friday afternoon.
Joint Base Cape Cod – already an emergency shelter designated by the state emergency management agency – is set up to provide “a safe temporary accommodation appropriate for the needs of families and individuals,” Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s office said in a
news release.
The migrants “will be housed in dormitory-style spaces at JBCC, with separate spaces accommodating both individuals and families,” and families will not be separated, it said. They will have access to services including legal, health care, food, hygiene kits, and crisis counseling, according to Baker’s office.
At the base, some of the migrants from Venezuela received general information about US immigration laws, according to a migrant who spoke to CNN. At this time, CNN is unable to verify what exactly was shared or from whom due to lack of access.
Biden officials meeting to coordinate administration's response to GOP governors sending migrants north
Meanwhile, a group of civil rights attorneys working with the migrants said their stories are “heartbreaking – and infuriating.” Many of the migrants went to a hospital in need of care upon their arrival at the island Wednesday.
Some of these migrants were sent to Martha’s Vineyard even though they have immigration hearings scheduled nowhere near Massachusetts, the group said. Migrants released from government custody often move to other cities in the US as they go through their immigration proceedings.
“This cowardly political stunt has placed our clients in peril,” the Lawyers for Civil Rights group said in a news release Friday. “Some now have immigration hearings as early as Monday thousands of miles away.”
Some attorneys from the group accompanied the migrants on the buses to the Cape Cod base.
CNN has reached out to Baker’s office and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency for comment, as they are coordinating efforts to care for the migrants at the base.
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