Upstate New York counties are vowing to fight New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ plans to send migrants and asylum seekers north for temporary housing.
On Monday, Orange County Executive Steven M. Neuhaus issued an Execute Order for hotels not to accept asylum seekers.
Neuhaus accused the mayor of reneging on his promise to send only 60 adult male migrant asylum seekers without notifying Orange County officials. He said the county could no longer rely on the representations of New York City officials.
“[T]here is no reason to believe that these migrants or asylum seekers will leave Orange County after New York City ceases to pay for the housing and any services that are presently receiving in New York City, or that many thousands more migrants or asylum seekers will not be transported to Orange County,” Neuhaus said.
The County Executive predicted that a surge of migrants into the county will overwhelm city resources and, as such, there is “there is no legal basis to provide adequate services to these migrants or asylum seekers.”
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Neuhaus ordered that all “hotels, motels and/or facilities allowing short-term rentals do not accept said migrants and/or asylum seekers for housing within Orange County.”
At a news conference with U.S. Rep Michael Lawler and other officials, Rockland County Executive Ed Day said the county was “not equipped to humanely assist these individuals, which eventually we’re going to have to do.”
Day, a Republican, called Mayor Adams’ plan to bus up to 300 single adult male migrants to hotels in Rockland and neighboring Orange counties “the same as throwing people out to the middle of the ocean who can’t swim and saying ‘go to shore.’ It can’t work.”
Adams, a Democrat, announced the plan Friday to bus migrants to the two counties north of the city on a voluntary basis. He said the program would help the city handle the more than 37,500 asylum seekers in the city’s care.
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Adams announced the plan as cities across the U.S. prepare for an increase in migrants seeking asylum when the pandemic-era policy, Title 42, that permitted the expulsion of many migrants ends. Officials anticipate that the end of the immigration limits under Title 42 of a 1944 public health law will mean more migrants trying to cross the southern border.
Adams said the migrants sent from New York City to Rockland and Orange counties would be provided with meals, counseling and other services for a stay of up to four months in the hotels.
Adams has complained for months that the volume of migrants arriving in New York was beyond the city’s capacity to house and has criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican elected officials for busing migrants to New York.
Adams’ administration has been using hotels within the city to house some migrants, mainly families with children. Plans to house others at sites including a cruise ship terminal and a beach parking lot in the Bronx have been scrapped. Texas and other border states have been dealing with historic numbers of illegal border crossings since the crisis began in the earliest days of President Biden’s term.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the mayor’s office for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
