Suburb wins round in battle with city over immigrants

New York City and governments in the Hudson Valley are battling in court and in public over the handling of asylum seekers arriving in New York City from southern border states and as of May 17 one of the suburban counties had won a round in court.

Orange County officials said they were blindsided when Mayor Eric Adams’ administration in New York City sent a busload of immigrants escorted by police and accompanied by security guards to the Crossroads Hotel in the Town of Newburgh. It turned out that other immigrants from the city had been bussed to the Ramada by Wyndham, also in Newburgh. That was followed by the arrival of 14 immigrant families consisting of 34 people at the Ramada Inn on Tuckahoe Road in Yonkers. Orange County officials said they learned that another seven busloads were going to be sent to their county.

State Supreme Court Justice Sandra B. Sciortino, whose courtroom is in Orange County’s capital Goshen, issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that had been sought by the county to stop Adams from sending even more busloads of asylum seekers to Orange. Adams had said that with New York City handling more than 65,000 immigrants and no place to house them the city needed to start sending some of the people to the suburbs.

New York City should not be establishing a homeless shelter outside of its borders in Orange County,” County Executive Steven M. Neuhaus said. “The city is a self-proclaimed sanctuary city; Orange County is not. We should not have to bear the burden of the immigration crisis that the federal government and Mayor Adams created, and I will continue to fight for Orange County”™s residents in regard to this important manner.”

The TRO allows the 186 asylum seekers already at the Crossroads Hotel and Ramada to remain in Orange County. It prohibits New York City from sending any additional asylum seekers to Orange County, pending further submissions from the parties and future determinations by the court. The parties are due back in court on June 21.

Orange County Attorney Richard Golden said that if any of the 186 asylum seekers leave the Crossroads or Ramada, New York City is not allowed to send individuals to replace them. Two lawsuits have been filed by Orange County. In addition to the lawsuit resulting in the TRO, there”™s a lawsuit against both of the hotels seeking to stop them from accepting asylum seekers from New York City in violation of an Order and Declaration of Emergency issued by Neuhaus.

On May 16, after several days of speculation but no firm word from New York City officials, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano announced that the Adams Administration had, indeed, sent a group of immigrants to the Ramada Inn on Tuckahoe Road in Yonkers.

Spano said that he was expecting additional immigrants to be sent there because the hotel has 100 rooms.

“We are being told that there are no school-age children coming at the moment but we also know that that can change at any time,” Spano said. “If you’re talking about children who don’t speak English and have no formal education … you’re talking about some kind of special ed.”

Spano called on New York state and New York City to work with Yonkers and provide funding that will cover the cost of services that the immigrant adults and children will need. New York state previously provided $1 billion in funding to New York City to cover immigrant costs.

“It has to be something that will be shared by all,” Spano said.

Yonkers City Council President Lakisha Collins-Bellamy said, “We also are a city of immigrants who encourage people to be open to other diverse communities. However, we are calling on New York state, we are calling on New York City to contribute to ensure that we have the resources available whether it’s for health care, for education of the asylum seekers. We have welcomed them.”

Yonkers Superintendent of Schools Edwin M. Quezada said that the school system has asked the state education department to provide funding needed to cover support services for any school-age immigrant children and even those who have not yet reached school age.

Spano said that Yonkers offers educational opportunities for adults in addition to schooling for children and that immigrant adults would be entitled to take advantage of those services. He said the city should be provided with the funding needed to cover those additional costs.

“It is a global issue,” Spano said. “If you think about what’s happening on the world stage and you think about individuals that have walked months at a time to be here, what’s going on where they’re living and what are we doing as a nation to deal with that?”

In Albany on May 17, four Republican assemblymen including Matt Slater of Yorktown in Westchester County announced they had legislation that they said would help in handling the migrant situation. Assemblyman Ed Ra of Franklin Square said his bill would require periodic reporting on funding being used to care for immigrants. Assemblymen Mike Reilly of Staten Island said his bill would prohibit the use of schools or other facilities designed for use by children to be used for sheltering immigrants. Assemblyman Brian Maher of Walden said his legislation would prohibit the removal of homeless veterans from hotels or other supportive shelters in view of the demand for housing immigrants. Slater’s pending legislation would require migrants sent to New York state to undergo background checks.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer on May 15 said that comments he had made a week earlier saying that Westchester stood ready to assist in handling New York City’s asylum seeker overload had produced some negative reaction on social media.

“I remember one comment that stood out was … ‘the immigrants coming to this county are destroying America,'” Latimer said. “When I saw that I thought to myself, ‘the writer has an opinion and he’s absolutely wrong.’ What is destroying America is anger and hatred. Anger and hatred destroys America because the principle of America’s founding was based on a sense of equality and opportunity for everybody, not just for some people.”

Latimer said that if Westchester is called upon to aid in caring for asylum seekers that New York City cannot handle the county will be asking the federal and state governments to take practical steps to help manage the situation.

Those steps would include calling for a satellite immigration court to be opened in Westchester. Latimer said that people who come to the U.S. and ask for asylum are waiting here legally while their case goes through the currently clogged immigration courts. Latimer said that a new immigration court in Westchester could also hear cases from other Hudson Valley counties.

“Executive authority in Washington should be used to empanel as many judges as is necessary to handle these cases immediately,” Latimer said. “That is a concrete step that will move the process along.”

Latimer said the federal government should work with the New York State Department of Labor and county government to make sure that asylum seekers have the opportunity to work.

“They could be put to work in numerous jobs that are available,” Latimer said. “The people coming here are asserting that they want to work. They don’t come here looking for a handout. They come here looking for the opportunity to work.”