New York City Mayor Eric Adams threw in the towel and sent a bus full of asylum-seekers to a suburban town north of the city. He sent the migrants to Orange Lake, a town with 10,000 residents 70 miles north of the city.
Adams said: “We are coordinating, explaining to our colleagues in the state that this is a statewide issue. We’re paying for services. We’re only taking volunteers. We are communicating with the officials up there on what we’re doing. Some may not like it, but people can’t say we’re not communicating.”
“I think it was Sunday when New York City Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol called me around 1 a.m. in the morning and said: We literally don’t have any more hotel space.”
Adams also issued an executive order to suspend parts of the city’s right-to-shelter law:
“When my son went to college in a dorm, he didn’t have his own kitchen and bathroom, and he still did a great job,” Adams said.
“That’s just not realistic: When you get thousands of people in your city, that you’re going to find a place for kitchen and a bathroom.”
Republican Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus is not happy. He said:
“We’ve had some very heated conversations between the mayor and myself.
“Nothing nasty, but I said, ‘Look it, this can be a real security problem if you bring these folks up here and we have zero information.’
“The process has been a disorganized disaster and the blame lies with the Mayor of New York, who originally opened the door for as many undocumented immigrants as possible to his self-proclaimed sanctuary city, and the Governor.”
“We’re looking for some communication, coordination, clarification and good government partnerships,” said Mark Lavigne, spokesperson for the state Association of Counties.
“This is a federal issue that is flowing downhill to the level of government that serves those most in need on the local level.”
“This is a renegade operation on the part of the mayor, and I cannot even begin to believe what’s going on at this point,” Rockland County Executive Ed Day said.
“I have never seen such bullying and arrogance in my entire career.”
Buses carrying migrants from NYC arrived in a nearby suburb today — marking the start of a new effort by Mayor Eric Adams to send migrant families elsewhere ahead of an expected influx of new arrivals. https://t.co/eDnmFHx8VU
— Axios (@axios) May 11, 2023
Mayor Eric Adams Sends Bus of Migrants to New York City Suburb https://t.co/ZkHNWkj3PU
— Timcast News (@TimcastNews) May 12, 2023