With New York City struggling to cope with a continuous flow of immigrants seeking asylum, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Friday (5) a new strategy: the city will begin paying for shelter for immigrants in the suburbs.
The city intended to house about 300 men in two hotels in Rockland and Orange counties, north of New York City, providing up to four months of shelter, food, and medical services.
Rockland County Executive Ed Day told The New York Times that he was surprised by Adams’ plan and acted quickly to find a way to stop it. He issued a state of emergency order on Saturday (6), declaring that no municipality could transport or house immigrants in Rockland without his permission.
“Whatever it takes to stop this, we will do,” Day told the NYT, a Republican, adding that the county is prepared to issue fines of up to $2,000 per violation, per day, for any hotel that accepts guests from the asylum program. “They are basically dumping them in a county where we are not prepared for them,” Day added.
It is unclear whether the state of emergency declaration will prevent New York City authorities from facilitating the transfer of immigrants. New York City issued its own state of emergency in October, in an attempt to mobilize federal resources to help with the growing immigrant population.
The change in New York City’s strategy comes after Adams said in a statement on Friday that a “leadership vacuum” at the federal level necessitated a new “decompression strategy” to share the burden of housing an increasing number of asylum seekers across municipalities. More than 60,800 immigrants have arrived in New York City since last spring, according to city officials.
It is expected that the flow of immigrants seeking asylum will grow even further starting this week, when the policy known as “Title 42,” imposed during the pandemic, expires, allowing federal authorities to expel immigrants attempting to cross the border illegally.
Source: The New York Times