Rockland Officials Oppose NYC Plan To House Immigrants In Orangetown

ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY — Local officials are furious about a plan by New York City to house 340 migrants in Orangetown and help them "integrate into the community."

"This is absurd, and we will not stand for it," County Executive Ed Day said Friday in a news release. "There is nothing humanitarian about a Sanctuary City sending busloads of people to a County that does not have the infrastructure to care for them. It’s the same as throwing them in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to swim."

He said he heard New York City Mayor Eric Adams called a local town supervisor early Friday indicating that undocumented individuals are being sent to Rockland County — with few other details aside from they would be housed in a local hotel.

"Upon further inquiry, the County has learned the City of New York plans to house about 340 adult males in Armoni Inn and Suites in Orangeburg for four months with plans to secure them work permits to integrate into the community," he said in the statement.

Since work permits typically take up to six months on average for asylum seekers to obtain, county officials said, they felt it was unlikely it would be achieved in four months — and, they said, they received no response by city officials when they asked about what will happen if the four months aren't enough.

County officials were also critical of the location chosen, saying it has no resources within walking distance.

While city officials allege they will provide some short-term funding and services to these individuals, no realistic plans have been communicated as to who will house, feed, and support the men in the long term, county officials said.

"In his Road Forward Plan Mayor Eric Adams calls on the Federal Government to establish a strategy for each migrant’s arrival well before entry into the country that ensures this humanitarian crisis is dealt with in a coordinated manner," Day said. "There is nothing coordinated about the situation but rather it's duplicitous of Mayor Adams to surprise a locality that busloads of migrants are heading to their town."

In early March Day and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-17) held a news conference with local food pantries and DSS. Day said while it was impossible to tell how many migrants had moved into Rockland County, officials believe the influx has strained local schools, food pantries, social services and housing.

RELATED: Illegal Immigration: National Issue, Local Effects: Rockland

At the time, Day also said pedophiles and the "criminalization of women" were immigration problems, but did not link them specifically to Rockland County. Both he and Lawler linked the national drug crisis to illegal immigrant drug traffickers, though the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, has said fentanyl is "overwhelmingly smuggled by U.S. citizens almost entirely for U.S. citizen consumers."

Rockland has no resources to help the migrant asylum seekers, Silvestri said, because Social Services funding is not applicable to undocumented individuals.

"Even if we did, this County has a well-known housing crisis that includes both a lack of housing and lack of affordable housing that this will only compound further," she said. "Our current system is not built to support asylum seekers and work permits do not guarantee work or integration."

With Title 42, a public health order adopted during the Trump administration because of the pandemic, set to expire May 11, Day said he was concerned these influxes are only "the tip of the iceberg" and urged Federal lawmakers to fix the immigration system.

In January, Adams floated a plan to resettle hundreds of migrant asylum-seekers upstate, though he was apparently talking about the real upstate, not the northern suburbs of NYC.

See also: Adams Advances Push To Resettle NYC Migrants Upstate

The idea was one of several Adams proposed since asylum seekers — mostly fleeing turmoil in Venezuela — started flowing into the city, often on buses from states with Republican governors who seek to raise political points about conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In March, he announced a new Office of Asylum Seeker Operations to oversee a new arrival center, resettlement and legal services.

SEE: New Plan For NYC Migrants Includes New Cities, Mayor Won't Say Where

On April 20, Adams made another plea for federal government action to help NYC, emphasizing that the estimated $4.3 billion cost of maintaining tens of thousands of asylum seekers is draining city resources.

On Friday, a plan by city officials to transform the first-floor gym of a Gramercy Park cop shop into a migrant shelter drew criticism from Pat Lynch, who heads the Police Benevolent Association.

SEE: NYC Turns NYPD Facility Into Asylum Seeker Housing, Union Says

"This screams out for solutions on the Federal level pertaining to our broken immigration system because any Federal lawmakers in support of this and Mayor Adams are not doing these folks any favors, quite the opposite; you’re not helping people, you’re hurting people," Day said.

Patch Editor Matt Troutman contributed to this report.