Three Haitian Nationals Charged With Gang Rape of Teen at Massachusetts Migrant Shelter

A Haitian national who entered the US under the CHNV parole program faces rape charges after an alleged assault at a Massachusetts shelter. ICE says federal officials withheld key program details.

Haitian CHNV Parolee Charged With Raping 15-Year-Old at State-Funded Massachusetts Shelter

Cory Alvarez, a Haitian national who entered the United States under the Biden-Harris administration's CHNV parole program, has been indicted in Massachusetts on two counts of child rape — including one count of "aggravated rape of a child with 10-year age difference" — following an alleged assault at a migrant shelter in Rockland, Mass., cis.org reports.

The alleged assault took place on the evening of March 13 at a Comfort Inn that had been designated as a migrant shelter the previous October. Both Alvarez and the purported victim — a 15-year-old girl — were residing at the hotel, which was funded at taxpayer expense.

Alvarez is presumed innocent until proven guilty. A grand jury considered the evidence sufficient to indict him, and his case was transferred from Plymouth District Court to Plymouth Superior Court, a tribunal reserved for more serious criminal matters where longer sentences are possible upon conviction.

A Low Bond, a Refused Detainer, and an ICE Arrest

Alvarez was initially denied bond in March. A Plymouth Superior Court judge later released him in late June on a $500 bond, subject to home confinement and twice-monthly check-ins. The court refused to honor an ICE detainer that had been placed on him, allowing Alvarez to be released onto the streets.

ICE ultimately located Alvarez near his residence in Brockton, Mass., and took him into custody on August 13.

What Is the CHNV Program?

The CHNV parole program — an acronym for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — was announced by the White House in January 2023. The administration expanded an earlier parole initiative for Venezuelan nationals to include citizens of those three additional countries, allowing up to 30,000 nationals per month, or 360,000 per year, to enter the United States on two-year parole periods.

The Department of Homeland Security maintained that all applicants were required to "undergo and clear robust security vetting" and that each applicant had to have a U.S.-based "supporter" willing to provide for them. Supporters were not required to be U.S. citizens or green card holders; prior parolees were themselves eligible to sponsor later arrivals. That supporter system was reportedly subject to widespread fraud.

DHS has since "temporarily paused" the issuance of new travel authorizations under the program while conducting what it described as a review of the supporter application process. As of the end of June, nearly 495,000 nationals of the four CHNV countries had entered the United States under the program — a population larger than the residents of Cleveland, New Orleans, or Pittsburgh.

ICE Complaint: Federal Officials Withheld Program Details

Fox News reported that Alvarez flew directly from Haiti to JFK International Airport in New York in June 2023 and was sponsored by someone in New Jersey under the CHNV program. He was not in New Jersey at the time of his arrest and did not appear to be receiving meaningful support from his designated sponsor.

The August 13 Fox News report on Alvarez's re-arrest included a statement from ICE that drew little additional commentary from the outlet despite its pointed language:

"As part of the Alvarez case, for months now, our office has repeatedly asked questions of state and federal officials about specifics of the CHNV process. We have received little to no answers. There is clearly a reason that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has paused the issuance of travel authorizations for new CHNV beneficiaries while it undertakes a massive review of the process," ICE said.

The statement appears to originate from ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations office in Boston, which carried out the arrest. It amounts to a direct internal complaint by a federal law enforcement agency against the administration it operates under — a notably unusual public declaration.

Vetting Concerns

Cis.org notes that ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations has also been at odds with ICE's Homeland Security Investigations component, which has sought to distance itself from the immigration enforcement side of the agency's mission. The Alvarez case appears to have added a further layer of tension between ERO and DHS leadership over how CHNV parole was administered.

Independent vetting of nationals from all four CHNV countries has long been flagged as a structural problem. Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have governments described as openly hostile to U.S. interests and unlikely to cooperate with background check requests. Haiti, meanwhile, currently has no functioning central government, making records verification effectively impossible.

Cis.org's Andrew Arthur, who first reported on Alvarez's arrest in March, notes that congressional Republicans and immigration researchers have raised questions about the CHNV program's vetting mechanisms for months without receiving substantive responses. That ICE's own enforcement arm made similar complaints publicly is, as Arthur writes, a development that speaks for itself.

Source: Eyewitness News Bahamas