Lawmaker seeks support for bill against using schools as migrant shelters

Rep. Juliet Harvey-Bolia urged lawmakers Wednesday to pass her bill against using public schools to house migrants, although she acknowledged there’s no record of this ever occurring in New Hampshire.

“There’s no harm done in putting House Bill 71 in our statute, if it just sits there and nobody has any plans to turn our schools into shelters,” Harvey-Bolia, R-Tilton, told the NH House Education Policy and Administration Committee on Wednesday.

“But if for some reason say, Massachusetts had a giant influx of immigrants or other parts of New England, it’s a possibility that it could happen.”

A fiscal note in the Republican-backed bill says it could conflict with federal guidelines that could lead the state to lose from $12 million to $18 million in federal money annually in a worst-case scenario.

Harvey-Bolia said this note is so speculative that it should not be taken seriously.

“Do we know of any times when the federal government has denied us funding because of an obscure piece of statute that is probably never going to be used? There’s no basis for that,” she said.

Harvey-Bolia said her concerns arose from an incident a year ago in Brooklyn in which 1,900 asylum seekers were temporarily moved from a tent shelter to an auditorium at James Madison High School to protect them from high winds and rain.

The school, which held remote classes the next day, drew strong public criticism for housing the migrants.

HB 71 would not apply if there was a state or federal disaster declaration and the school was used as a shelter for no more than 72 hours.

Public schools, including colleges and universities, would have to follow provisions of the bill as a condition of receiving state financial assistance.

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Jerry Frew, associate executive director of the NH School Administrators Association, questioned how provisions of the measure would be enforced in a time when people needed shelter.

“Who determines on-site whether entry should be granted to a community member or not; is that the school principal, is it the administrative assistant, is it the superintendent?” Frew, the former superintendent at Kearsarge Regional School District, asked the committee.

“In Kearsarge we had seven towns. Do we have seven town clerks sitting in the lobby of the school determining whether a person could be admitted to the emergency shelter or not because of their status as a resident or immigrant or not?”

The committee will eventually schedule a vote on HB 71 and forward it to the full House for further consideration.

It is one of several pieces of legislation being considered in the NH Legislature this year involving immigration, including one that seeks to prohibit municipal, county or state agencies from having policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Meanwhile, on the national level, President Trump has promised to crack down on immigration and deport millions of people who entered the country without documentation.

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Rick Green can be reached at 603-352-1234, ext. 1435, or rgreen@keenesentinel.com.

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