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Suburbs Are Furious at Adams’s Plan

to Send Migrants to Their Hotels
The Rockland County executive declared a emergency in
state of
a move to block Mayor Eric Adams’s plan to move some asylum
seekers to the suburbs.

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Asylum seekers continue to arrive by bus into New York, including what appeared to
be a family last week at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown. Juan Arredondo
for The New York Times

By Stefanos Chen

May 7, 2023, 6:49 p.m. ET

With New York City struggling to cope with a continuing influx of

migrants seeking asylum, Mayor Eric Adams on Friday announced
a new strategy: The city would begin paying for shelter at two
suburban locations outside the five boroughs.

It took less than a day for the plan to hit a wall. Officials in one of
the two counties strongly rejected the city’s relocation efforts and
declared a state of emergency to thwart the attempt.

The escalation marks one of the first challenges to Mayor Adams’s

so-called decompression strategy to ease the burden of housing the
city’s growing number of asylum seekers, at a time when
thousands more are soon expected to seek refuge in New York as a
pandemic-era border policy is set to expire.

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.

Although Mr. Adams said that he had consulted with the state and
with local officials, at least two said they were caught off guard and
vowed to fight the plan.

“It felt like they were trying to do a Friday night drop,” said Teresa
Kenny, the town supervisor of Orangetown, who said she learned Editors’ Picks
about the plan only hours before Mayor Adams announced the
move. “I feel like the mayor called me to check a box so he couldn’t An N.F.L. Star Finds
Confidence in
be criticized for not talking to us.” Making Music

The Rockland County executive, Ed Day, said he was stunned by

Mr. Adams’s plan, and moved quickly to find a way to stop it. He How to Spot a
Wellness Scam
issued the state of emergency order on Saturday, declaring that no
municipality could transport or house migrants in Rockland
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without his permission. Wedding Film
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“Whatever we need to do to stop this, we will do,” Mr. Day, a
Republican, said in a phone interview on Sunday, adding that the
county is prepared to issue fines of up to $2,000, per violation, per
day, to any hotel that accepts asylum seekers from the program.
“They’re basically dumping them into a county where we’re not
prepared for them,” he said.

Mayor Eric Adams has begun a so-called decompression strategy to try to alleviate
the influx of migrants into New York City. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

It is unclear whether the declaration of a state of emergency will

prevent New York City officials from arranging the transfer of
migrants. New York City issued its own state of emergency in
October, in a bid to marshal federal resources to help with the
growing migrant population.

Rockland is the first county in the state, outside of New York City,
to issue such an order to address the migrant crisis, said Stephen
Acquario, the executive director of the New York State Association
of Counties.

“We need leadership here, because this is an area of unfamiliar,

uncharted waters,” he said, noting that the effort to prevent the
transfer of migrants to Rockland is likely to have to be decided in
court. The county also has a law that prohibits hotel guests from
staying for more than 30 days at a time, which could present
another challenge.

Mr. Acquario, who has spoken with representative from several of

the state’s counties outside the city since the plan was announced,
said that he is sympathetic to New York City’s position, but that the
problem requires greater cooperation between levels of
government.

“This is a homelessness problem, and it’s largely the fault of the

federal government,” he said. “And here we have the lowest unit of
government cleaning up the mess of the United States.”

New York City has used a variety of places to house the asylum seekers, including
hotels like the Watson Hotel in Manhattan. Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

The shift in New York City’s strategy comes after Mr. Adams said
in a statement on Friday that a “vacuum of leadership” at the
federal level has necessitated a new “decompression strategy,” to
share the burden of housing a growing number of asylum seekers
across municipalities. Over 60,800 migrants have arrived in New
York City since last spring, according to city officials.

Those sent to Rockland and Orange Counties would be volunteers

taken from a pool of single-adult men already in the city’s care, a
city spokesman said.

Calls to the hotel in Rockland County, the 170-room Armoni Inn and
Suites in Orangetown, were not answered. Piles of mattresses were
stacked outside of the hotel on Friday afternoon, Ms. Kenny, the
Orangetown town supervisor said, even though a wedding
reception was being held at the building over the weekend.

An official in Orange County identified the other hotel as the

Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh; a receptionist there declined to
comment.

“This came out of left field,” said Steve Neuhaus, the Orange
County executive, adding that Mayor Adams told him the
Newburgh hotel would receive about 60 migrants.

Mr. Neuhaus, a Republican, also questioned how the county would

handle the newcomers at the Newburgh hotel, which is on a
commercial strip next to an ice-skating rink, a gym and not much
else.

“We are maxed out with the homeless in the county,” he said,
adding that he is also considering issuing a state of emergency to
block the move.

Stefanos Chen is a real estate reporter, based in New York. He joined The Times in 2017
after five years with The Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter and multimedia
producer. @ stefanoschen

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