'Enough is enough!': Massachusetts state senator demands transparency after illegal immigrant arrested at migrant motel with AR-15, fentanyl

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Jan 3, 2025

Published in News & Features

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BOSTON — A state senator is demanding that the court records be made public in the case of an illegal immigrant evicted from a Revere shelter program following his arrest on charges including possession of an AR-15 rifle and roughly $1 million in fentanyl.

“If there’s anything I can do to effectuate change it’s demanding that the documents in this case be made public,” Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Republican, told The Boston Herald Friday. “The public has a right to know what they’re funding.”

Revere Police arrested Leonardo Andujar Sanchez, 28, on Dec. 27. The Dominican resident of a Quality Inn used by the state to shelter migrants was charged in Chelsea District Court with 11 counts: 10 related to firearm possession — including “alien” in possession of a firearm, leaving no doubt to his documentation status — and one charging him with possession of nearly five kilograms of fentanyl.

Sanchez was arraigned on Dec. 30 and was ordered jailed until the end of April after being found dangerous during a subsequent hearing on Thursday. But the only court record the public can access is a listing of his charges.

There is no criminal complaint or police report available, either through the courts or through the Revere Police Department, which informed the Herald it had 10 days to comply with the request for the police report. Judge Jane Prince ordered the court documents impounded.

Sanchez and his family — which the state did not define — have been at the Revere emergency assistance, or EA, shelter since Oct. 15, according to information provided by the Executive Office of Housing & Livable Communities, or EOHLC.

The office conducts warrant checks of all EA residents every 30 days and all residents undergo background checks when they apply for a shelter, according to EOHLC spokesman Noah Bombard.

The Quality Inn shelter in Revere has contracted on-site security at all times, he added. But Bombard did not address the alleged fentanyl and weapons possession counts.

Sanchez has obtained a private attorney, John Benzan, to represent him. Private counsel is a luxury not expected of a resident of the Massachusetts emergency assistance shelter program, from which the state confirms Sanchez was evicted following his arrest.

“We took immediate action to terminate this individual from the EA system, and we confirmed with federal immigration officials that they have lodged a detainer,” Bombard wrote in a statement shared with the Herald Thursday night.

The EA family shelter program requires that the applicant be within 115% of the federal poverty guidelines. That means a single person must make $1,443 per month or less and an additional $515 or $516 per month for each additional person in a household.

Attorneys in Massachusetts averaged an hourly rate of $285 in 2023, according to an analysis by LawPay, a provider of legal payment management software.

The charges against Sanchez allege he was caught with just less than five kilograms of fentanyl in his possession. At a going street rate of $150 to $200 a gram, according to the drug rehabilitation center network Avenues, Sanchez allegedly had $750,000 to $1 million worth of the stuff.

The state has spent roughly $2.5 billion on the emergency shelter program since the program itself became an emergency, Fattman said.

The Herald has reported that the state spends about $75 million each month — or about $10,000 per family — on the program.

“And that’s what we know about — that’s the money that is purported to be spent,” Fattman added.

He recalled that when legislators were sworn in on Wednesday no major legislative leader spoke about this issue.

“To me, this calls for the voters to change this by way of ballot petition,” Fattman said, “to say ‘Enough is enough,’ that Massachusetts residents must come first.”

Leadership should be thinking about major issues — and such expensive or public safety-related problems, especially — now that the voters in November expressed skepticism about how public money is being handled.

More than 70% voted in favor of ballot Question 1, according to state records, which specifies “that the State Auditor has the authority to audit the Legislature.”

It means people are seeking transparency and accountability on Beacon Hill, Fattman says, and that could very well start with this emergency assistance shelter program that has time and again been the setting for all kinds of headline crime.

That includes a kitchen fire at a shelter in Fattman’s own district and child rape cases in multiple other jurisdictions — a situation that the senator said “gets me really fired up.”

“The free-for-all that is right to shelter has to be reformed,” Fattman said, who described charges as “sickening” and “outrageous.”