We are a nation of immigrants — and a nation of laws. You cannot be the first without the second. What is happening on Cape Cod is not immigration. It is a policy of illegal entry, imposed on us, paid for by us, and never once put to a vote.
Our grandparents came the right way — they waited in line, learned the country, and pledged themselves to it. What Beacon Hill has done to Cape Cod is the opposite: it has taken people who entered the country illegally and moved them into our motels, our schools, and our budgets, in the middle of the night, without telling anyone. This page lays out what happened, what it cost, and the names behind the consequences.
It washed ashore on Cape Cod.
On the night of September 10, 2023 — around 9:00 p.m., with no notice to the Town of Yarmouth — the state began moving migrant families into the Yarmouth Harborside Suites motel on Route 28. Six families became thirty-nine. Neighbors found out when the buses arrived. The town’s zoning board later ruled the motel had blown past the 30-day residency bylaw — but by then the point had been made: the people who live here get informed last, if at all.
This was never a Cape Cod decision. Washington opened the border; Beacon Hill decided your community would absorb the consequences — and that you would pay for it — through agencies you can’t reach and “emergencies” that never end.
They never asked you. They just sent the bill.
Massachusetts is the only state in the country with a “right to shelter” mandate, and the influx turned it into an open tab. At the peak, the state’s emergency shelter program was on track to cost more than $1 billion a year — on your dime. And when Cape Cod families needed to know who and where and at what cost, the answer was silence.
The Massachusetts Republican Party had to file a public-records demand just to pry loose the basics — the vendors, the locations, the incident reports. Party chair Amy Carnevale said the administration had “shrouded nearly $1 billion spent in secrecy” and withheld information on some 600 incidents involving police, fire and EMT. That is not compassion. That is a government hiding the receipts from the people footing the bill.
And the grift hides in the line items. Under a no-bid shelter-transport contract, a Cape company was paid $140 to drive a migrant family 223 feet — a distance you could walk in under a minute. State Auditor Diana DiZoglio called the shelter contracting “improper and unlawful.” Your money; their friends; no bid.
The nonprofits cash in.
In South Dennis, the Housing Assistance Corporation — the same regional nonprofit at the center of Cape Cod’s housing-money machine — bought a 57,000-square-foot former nursing home for $4.3 million, relocated its 82 elderly residents, and moved to pack in up to 79 families. When the Town of Dennis pushed back, HAC reached for the state’s Dover Amendment to bulldoze local zoning by claiming the shelter was “educational.” The planning board chairman wasn’t buying it: “I find that the primary reason is not education here. It’s 100% housing.”
Even the shelters are expelling people — and the state won’t say why.
In June 2024, after the Boston Herald reported that more than 20 people had been expelled from the state’s emergency migrant-shelter program for “inappropriate actions,” State Representative Steven Xiarhos — a former deputy chief of police and a Gold Star father — sent Governor Healey a formal letter demanding answers.
“Were any of these actions criminal in nature, particularly involving violent and/or sexual offenses? … Are any migrants expelled from shelters being referred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for processing? If not, why?”
— State Rep. Steven Xiarhos to Gov. Healey, June 5, 2024
Six plain questions from a lawman and a grieving father. To this day, they have not been honestly answered. When the government throws someone out of a shelter for “inappropriate actions” and won’t tell you whether that person was referred to the police or to ICE — or simply released onto the street — that silence is the story.
The consequences have names.
The people who insist there is no cost never have to live next to it. These are documented Massachusetts cases — each one an individual, charged or convicted through the courts. We state each disposition exactly as the record shows it.
- West Yarmouth — convicted. Lucas Nascimento-Silva, here illegally, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in federal court for running guns without a license — in our founder’s own neighborhood. Convicted
- Falmouth — charged. A Brazilian national in the country illegally was charged with rape by Falmouth police in January 2025 and taken into ICE custody. Charged — not convicted
- Bristol County — charged. A Guatemalan national who entered illegally was charged with rape of a child. ICE took custody in May 2024. Charged — not convicted
- Nantucket — charged. A Salvadoran national in the country illegally — whom ICE describes as a documented MS-13 member — was charged with assault and battery on a household member. Charged — not convicted
- Enforcement is finally happening. In a single month-long 2025 operation, ICE made 1,461 arrests across Massachusetts; a separate six-day sweep netted hundreds more. The Coast Guard and DEA have assisted ICE arrests on Nantucket. ICE / federal
Question 4: We offer no sanctuary.
In 2026, outside activists pushed a ballot measure to nudge Yarmouth toward “sanctuary” politics. It squeaked through on a narrow vote — but the fight exposed the divide clearly, and our answer has not changed: the law applies to everyone equally, and American citizens come first. A town that will not enforce its own bylaws against a motel will not protect its own residents against a policy imposed from Boston. We offer no sanctuary to illegal entry, and we make no apology for saying so.
Here is the propaganda they mailed to Cape Cod homes to sell it — dressed up with Statue-of-Liberty and Depression-era Dust-Bowl photos of American citizens to push a policy about illegal entry, then printed and mailed presorted first-class all the way from Dallas, Texas.
We warned you first.
Cape Cod Concerned Citizens did not appear last week. Back in September 2023 — when most of the Cape still hadn’t heard a word about any of this — a group of more than 4,000 neighbors put an open letter directly to State Senator Julian Cyr:
“You have not explained why Cape Cod citizens have been displaced so that immigrants could be moved into their housing. … We are here on Cape Cod fighting for the citizens who cannot afford housing, food, healthcare.”
— Cape Cod Concerned Citizens, Open Letter to Sen. Julian Cyr, September 2023
Cape Cod Concerned Citizens was built at kitchen tables and on street corners here on the Cape — not at a fundraiser in another state. While our senator sent supporters carefully worded emails, our members were out on the overpasses, in the town-hall seats, and in the record with public-records requests.
Where we stand
- Legal immigrants: welcome. Illegal entry: not a policy you consented to.
- Enforce the laws already on the books — and stop using your taxes to subsidize the people breaking them.
- Transparency now. Names, locations, costs, and incident reports — the public paid for them and has a right to see them.
- Taxpayers and citizens first. Every dollar spent housing the world is a dollar not spent on the neighbors who built this place.
- Back the men and women of ICE and law enforcement doing a job Washington made impossible.
Sources: Cape & Islands / CapeCod.com (Harborside Suites, Sept 2023); Boston Herald (South Dennis HAC shelter, May 2024); Rep. Steven Xiarhos letter to Gov. Healey (June 5, 2024); Fox News / MassGOP public-records demand (Aug 2024); Office of the State Auditor (shelter-transport contracting, 2025); U.S. Dept. of Justice & Hyannis News (Nascimento-Silva conviction); Boston 25 & ICE ERO Boston (Falmouth, Bristol County, Nantucket cases — charges as stated); Hyannis News (Cape Cod Concerned Citizens open letter to Sen. Cyr, Sept 2023). Criminal charges are allegations unless a conviction is noted.
