NYC to bus migrants upstate, local officials push back

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan on Friday, May 5, that would see up to 300 migrants sent to hotels in nearby counties. Planned destinations for the migrants include the hamlet of Orangeburg in Rockland County and the hamlet of Orange Lake in neighboring Orange County.

The migrants will be single, adult men and will stay in the hotels on a voluntary basis. Friday’s announcement came after Mayor Adams repeatedly pleaded for more state and federal help to deal with an influx of asylum-seekers, many of whom were bused to the city by out-of-state governors.

“Despite calling on the federal government for a national decompression strategy since last year, and for a decompression strategy across the state, New York City has been left without the necessary support to manage this crisis,” Adams said in a statement. “With a vacuum of leadership, we are now being forced to undertake our own decompression strategy.”

The plan to bus migrants has already faced pushback from the New York counties involved. Rockland County Executive Ed Fay declared a state of emergency over what he described as an extreme housing crisis in the county.

“The people that [New York City] is sending to Orangetown have been failed first by the federal government, which has not adequately addressed immigration issues, and now by the City of New York, which had let people know that they would take them in as a sanctuary city,” Rockland County Supervisor Teresa Kenney said in a post on her Facebook page. “To send these people to a location that is not equipped to meet their needs, is a betrayal of that often-expressed desire by [New York City] to be a sanctuary for them.