Orange County Executive Steven M. Neuhaus and Rockland County Executive Ed Day are among the elected officials who have been vehemently opposing plans by New York City Mayor Eric Adams to bus immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. from the city to locations in the Hudson Valley.
Neuhaus issued an executive order to block hotels in Orange from housing asylum seekers. Neuhaus said that Adams went back on a promise he made not to send more than 60 adult male immigrants to hotels in Orange County.
Day declared a State of Emergency in Rockland County after learning that Adams planned to send 340 or more immigrant single men to stay at a hotel in Orangeburg.
During a May 8 news conference at the Rockland County offices in New City, Republican Rep. Mike Lawyer urged elected officials to show up on May 10 when President Biden was due to visit Westchester Community College to deliver a speech on the debt ceiling and other economic matters. Lawler said they need to demonstrate their opposition to Adams”™s plan to send immigrants out of New York City that Lawler said the Biden Administration supports.
“New York City is a sanctuary city. Rockland County is not,” Lawler said. “We will not pay for the foolish policy decisions made by a city council that has been led by radical socialists.”
Orangetown Supervisor Teresa Kenny said that all of the immigrants would be single men and she charged that none would have been vetted for possible criminal records.
Kenny said that she talked with Adams and he failed to provide answers to many of the questions she raised and members of his administration have not been forthcoming with her about the plan.
“You are bringing upwards of 340 men into the hamlet of Orangeburg,” Kenny said. “It”™s a little over three square miles with a population about 4,600 people. It”™s a residential suburban community and you”™re going to bring 340 single men that we don”™t know if they have criminal records.”
Day complained that the Adams administration notified New York state of its plan long before Rockland became aware of it.
“We went and did our own due diligence. That”™s how we found out about the plan,” Day said. “If someone”™s going to tell you, the working press, that we were informed — that”™s utter nonsense. We were not informed. We had to figure it out ourselves.”
Adams had previously proposed sending immigrants to SUNY”™s Sullivan County campus. They initially were supposed to be Ukrainian families who had fled the war zone. SUNY officials had agreed to house them in dorms that had plenty of vacant space. However, it was discovered that Adams did not plan to send Ukrainian refugees and instead was planning to send about 100 single homeless men from various countries. Sullivan County officials accused Adams of trying to get away with a “bait and switch” scheme.
“New York City Mayor Eric Adams, hear me loud and clear. Rockland will not stand for your administration, which boasts itself as a sanctuary city, diverting busloads of undocumented individuals to our county,” Day said. “This is not about being anti-immigration but as it stands you are only incentivizing illegal immigration, which does nothing to support our infrastructure or the hardworking citizens we are elected to serve. It is only draining taxpayer resources from the families who are already here and struggling, including our homeless, low-income, disabled, seniors and other vulnerable populations.”
The State of Emergency that Day put into effect in Rockland prohibits any hotel or motel from housing migrants without a license from the county. Additionally, it prohibits municipalities from housing anyone in Rockland without a contract agreement with the county. Violations of the State of Emergency could result in fines of $2,000 per migrant per day.
“Instead of trying to help our own families the state of New York is using taxpayer dollars to fund up to one year of housing and services for noncitizens to relocate within our state,” Day alleged. He posed a question for Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul: “Will you be offering all of our low-income families free housing, food, clothing and more for up to a year as the current state of the economy drives the cost of living, home and apartment prices to new record highs?”
In Westchester, County Executive George Latimer said that he was advised by County Attorney John Nonna that he does not have the power to deal with an immigration issue by declaring a State of Emergency. Latimer said that the debate in Washington on immigration that includes whether to build a full-scale border wall and whether to completely end immigration has delayed the country from addressing immigration policy.
“That debate in Washington has frozen us from having any kind of a rational policy,” Latimer said. “And so it falls to state governments and now local governments to deal with the aftermath of that.”
