Neo-Nazi group NSC-131 holds anti-immigration protest outside Woburn hotel

Members of a neo-Nazi group demonstrated outside three Woburn hotels on Saturday, delivering anti-immigration messages about a week after city officials said that nearly 60 migrant families were being housed in hotels in the city.

Photos posted on social media by protesters and a group called New England Nazi Watch showed several demonstrators standing outside a Red Roof Inn on Commerce Way, wearing face coverings and holding a banner indicating they were part of Nationalist Socialist Club 131.

20230826 Woburn MA NSC-131 anti-immigrant rally pic.twitter.com/TAaoxmFByY

— New England Nazi Watch (@nenaziwatch) August 27, 2023

The group, also known as NSC-131, is a self-described “pro-white, street-oriented fraternity dedicated to raising AUTHENTIC resistance to the enemies of our people in the New England area.” It has been classified as a neo-Nazi organization by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The hate group took credit for the protest on the social media platform Telegram.

“NSC 131 organized an emergency mobilization in Woburn, Massachusetts to oppose invaders and their collaborators,” the group wrote. “The action was conducted in response to hundreds of Haitian invaders being housed in Woburn hotels with taxpayer dollars.”

In an email to the Globe on Monday, the group said it had protested outside three hotels.

The demonstrators were also seen in the posted photos holding what appeared to be red flares, casting an ominous scarlet glow up the side of the building.

In one image, a Woburn police cruiser was seen parked nearby as the group continued to demonstrate. A Woburn police officer who answered the phone at the department Sunday said there were no arrests and did not release further information.

On Monday, police said about two dozen people protested outside the hotels.

“There was no violence, no arrests and no flares,” Police Chief Robert F. Rufo Jr. said by email. “Upon the presence of marked police units the group dispersed at each location.”

NSC-131 has been active in Massachusetts for more than a year, staging protests at drag queen story hours in Jamaica Plain, the Seaport, Fall River, and Taunton.

On June 14, Chris Hood, a leader of the group, was ordered not guilty to public fighting in connection to the July 2022 protest in Jamaica Plain, the Globe reported. On June 5, a New Hampshire superior court judge dismissed another case against NSC-131 taken up by the state’s attorney general, according to WBUR.

The Woburn demonstration comes after Woburn Mayor Scott Galvin released a statement on Aug. 18 saying that the state’s office of Housing and Livable Communities had placed 59 migrant families in several hotels across the city and he was anticipating an additional 100 families to arrive.

The families were placed in Woburn under the state’s “Right to Shelter” law, which requires the state to provide housing to families with children and to pregnant women who are homeless, he said.

“The state’s policy is to place these families in hotels in cities and towns throughout the region without the need for local approval and in many instances without prior notice,” he said.