Rockland County officials on Monday pushed back against plans by Mayor Eric Adams to bus 300 or more asylum seekers upstate, saying they’re considering legal action to block the move and would fine any hotel that takes in asylum seekers up to $2,000 per person, per day.
The action, announced at a heated news conference which brought together angry county officials with U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents Rockland County, and immigrant rights advocates, followed the declaration of a 30-day state of emergency by County Executive Ed Day, who claims the designation would prevent outside municipalities from bringing migrants to Rockland.
The pushback comes amid rising concern that the expiration of a pandemic-era law known as Title 42 this week would result in a surge in the number of people allowed to cross the Southern Border into the United States, eventually meaning more migrants being dispatched to New York by border-state officials..
Day, a Republican, said the county is simply unequipped to accommodate hundreds of asylum seekers.
“Three hundred-forty people is about five times the amount of the homeless population here in Rockland County. That’s a huge amount of change,” Day said.
The Adams administration did not respond to accusations from Rockland County officials that they’d been blindsided by the proposal and given few details about where asylum seekers were to be taken. On Friday, the mayor issued a statement noting that the city had received “over 60,800 asylum seekers” since last spring, of which 37,500 remained in city shelters
The plan, said Adams, would specifically allow for single, male asylum seekers to voluntarily transfer to one of two hotels, one in Rockland County and another in Orange County, for up to four months, and that those who do would receive “the same city-funded services available at Humanitarian Emergency Relief and Response Centers” in the city.
Calls to the Armoni Inn and Suites, the Rockland County…
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