Trending
Sen. George Borrello is also stepping into the legislative fight over migrants, co-sponsoring one of three Republican bills introduced in the state Senate this week.
Borrello is co-sponsor of S.6964, introduced by Sen. Dean Murray, R-Patchogue, that would require local governments comply with a detainer request by a federal law enforcement agency as well as require local governments not interfere with the ability of federal law enforcement to conduct enforcement activities at local jails.
Murray's legislative justification ties the legislation to this week's expiration of Title 42, which allowed authorities to use a public health law to rapidly expel migrants crossing over the border, denying them the right to seek asylum. U.S. officials turned away migrants more than 2.8 million times under the order. New rules strip away that ability to simply expel asylum seekers, but add stricter consequences to those not going through official migratory channels. Migrants caught crossing illegally will not be allowed to return for five years and can face criminal prosecution if they do.
The Biden administration has also set caps on the amount of migrants allowed to seek asylum. At the same time, Biden is likely to continue American pressure on Mexico and other countries to make it harder for migrants to move north.
"With the federal Title 42 law expiration, New York state and many jurisdictions therein have declared a state of emergency due to the anticipated influx of illegal immigrants," Murray wrote. "Within days -- and even before the official expiration of Title 42 -- jurisdictions in the state have acted to provide sanctuary to illegal immigrants, sometimes at the detriment of other New York residents."
The number of migrants encountered at the U.S. southern border fell 50% in the three days following the end of Title 42. But the U.S. Homeland Security's assistant secretary for border and immigration policy said Monday that it's too early to say why or what this means for the long-term.
Republican lawmakers also want to give local governments the ability to override a state disaster emergency (S.6995) and prohibit hotels and homeless shelters from displacing vulnerable people to house migrants (S.7009). Neither of the three bills is likely to be approved in the Democrat-controlled legislature.
Sen. Bill Weber, R-Nanuet, sponsored S.6995 in response to Gov. Kathy Hochul's emergency order diverting resources to cities and towns to support asylum seekers and authorizing the state to deploy more National Guard members to provide support as well as the use of that order to move migrants into Rockland and Orange counties.
DESPERATE SITUATION
Borrello's letter to Hochul was spurred by the governor's emergency declaration on May 9 that the lifting of Title 42 would create an imminent disaster that local governments can't handle. Executive Order 28 gives the governor the ability to suspend parts of the state Finance Law to purchase food, supplies, services, and equipment or furnish or provide various centralized services to assist affected local governments, individuals, and other non-state entities as well as the Real Property and Proceedings Law to prevent the creation of a landlord-tenant relationship between those helping respond to the migrant crisis and those in need of shelter or housing. The Real Property and Proceedings Law section of the order specifically applies to ospitals, hotels, non-profit housing providers or anyone who provides temporary housing for 30 days or more.
Hochul told Spectrum News earlier this week that New York City is at capacity and the state is working to find sites that will welcome migrants. She termed the influx of migrants a desperate situation.
""There are welcoming counties out there," she said in the Spectrum News interview. "It just, sometimes you identify a community that wants them, but you have to find the hotel to stay, and a lot of other communities have homelessness problems."
A temporary restraining order was issued Tuesday by state Superior Court Judge Sandra Sciortino preventing New York City Mayor Eric Adams from relocating more asylum-seekers to Orange County while a legal challenge filed by the county plays out in court. The order also requires New York City to provide details about the identification of 186 single men housed at two Newburgh hotels and continue paying for their housing, food, medical needs, laundry and transportation. If any of the individuals leave the hotel, the city is not allowed to send more migrants to replace them.
"This is about local control, giving power back to locals, and allowing them to make decisions about what is best for their communities without interference from the state," Weber wrote in his legislative justification. "The need for this was recently highlighted with several counties in the Hudson Valley, specifically Rockland and Orange Counties, being forced by the state to house and provide services to migrants despite these counties having made clear they do not have the resources to do so."
In New York, the 2023-24 state budget includes $1 billion for New York City, which has been overrun with migrants over the past several months as border state governors began sending migrants north. Adams has struggled to deal with the issue, most recently announcing reopening the historic Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan to accommodate asylum seekers as other New York City hotels are also being converted into emergency shelters.
"New York City has now cared for more than 65,000 asylum seekers -- already opening up over 140 emergency shelters and eight large-scale humanitarian relief centers in addition to this one to manage this national crisis," the mayor said in a statement announcing the Roosevelt decision.