Democratic mayors in New Jersey have responded very differently to the growing number of migrants sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in an apparent attempt to circumvent Mayor Eric Adams’ recent executive order changing how buses carrying asylum-seekers could arrive in New York City.
Buses showed up unannounced on Saturday to train stations in Edison, Jersey City, Trenton, Fanwood and Secaucus, where migrants were then loaded onto commuter trains into New York. Adams imposed the order last month, limiting the times buses can arrive and also requiring the city be notified before such arrivals.
“Our position in Edison Township is that they’re not welcome here,” Edison Mayor Sam Joshi told News12. “They’re illegal and they belong on the other side of the border…We don’t want them in Edison, period.”
The statement prompted a response from Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who grew up in Edison, and is the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
“Edison is an immigrant community and I know it’s an easy political soundbite to say, ‘Send those people home or they should follow the process,’” said Fulop, a friend of Joshi’s. “They come here and they seek asylum and then there is a process to vet whether that is true or not true. And so just to say, ‘Put them on a bus and send them home where they should be on the other side of the border,’ I think we’re better than that, whether it’s Edison, Jersey City or New Jersey, or really this country.”
Fulop said Jersey City had already been putting migrants in motels without incident for several months.
The mayor of Trenton said he sympathized with the migrants, but his city doesn’t have the resources to provide housing or other services.
“As of right now, we’re monitoring the situation and we do have concerns that there could be an influx of migrants,” Mayor Reed Gusciora said. “The Republicans in the [U.S. House of Representatives], at least, need to really get back to work and not engage in the nonsense…
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