Latimer Cites History, Bible Over NYC Migrant Controversy

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — Westchester County Executive George Latimer covered pragmatism, politics, history and faith in a video talk to residents Monday about New York City's plan to house several hundred migrants at hotels in Rockland and Orange counties as the city has sought places to house the asylum seekers being bused from Texas.

His executive team has been working on what the response can and should be, he said, though they have not yet been asked or informed about plans that include Westchester.

"I do want to highlight that we are as an executive team going through the issue in some detail," he said first. "There is an anticipation that that dialog is coming, but it has not happened yet, and I’m mindful of what my colleagues in Rockland and Orange have said about this."

Both of those county executives issued State of Emergency declarations prohibiting any placement there, however temporary, of migrants sent to New York City.

SEE:

• NYC Plan For Migrants Like 'Human Trafficking' - Rockland County Exec
• Orange County Exec Declares State of Emergency Over NYC Migrant Plan

For Latimer, there are two dimensions to the problem, he said: One is practical and the other is moral.

Westchester would need to know what's the legal authority, what's the timeline, what's the cost, who would pay for it, and who would provide services, since the county may not use social services funds under federal law.

"I have responsibility," he said, naming budget and public safety specifically. To grapple with those important issues, he said, he would be talking with his fellow county executives and city and state officials.

However, he will not be declaring a state of emergency. Westchester's county attorney disagrees with his counterparts in Orange and Rockland, advising that, in his opinion, Westchester does not have a legal basis for so doing because they are reserved for disasters, rioting and catastrophes, Latimer said. "That is the interpretation of the law as I have received it from the county attorney who has given us sound advice on so many other things."

He said he hoped to have plans to share by the end of the week with residents and the Board of Legislators.

First, he wanted to have a deeper discussion.

"The issue is going to be framed in ways that are highly emotional for people, and their political ideologies, their philosophies, are very much going to be in play," Latimer said.

He reminded listeners that Westchester has dealt with this issue before. In 2018, the Trump administration placed 1,000 migrant children in four different locations across Westchester for an indefinite period. "We inquired, and we were told ... to butt out. We had no role to play."

Then in 2021-22, federal resettlement flights used the Westchester County Airport as a portal while taking asylum seekers to various endpoints. That caused quite a public argument on social media, Latimer said. "'They were staying at the Rye Town Hilton.' They weren’t. 'They were staying at Arrowwood.' They weren’t. The anger that some people in this society have over the immigrant population coming into the United States was clear, was palpable."

He pointed out that it's a global issue, with European countries struggling with migrants from other continents.

"We are not alone. As a country with economic success and political freedom we have positioned ourselves, we are, in fact, an attractive place for people to come to," he said.

He reminded viewers of then-President Ronald Reagan's amnesty for many immigrants without documents in the 1980s.

"That of course did not address the future," he said. "It is clear that we do not have what we need to have, which is a national policy properly debated and implemented by the federal government. And the reason why we don’t have that is because we have a deep divide over the role that the United States should take."

Without that national policy we have gridlock, he said, which has defined itself as political ideology.

"There are people that believe there should be some path to citizenship, to workership here," he said. "And there are some people that believe we should not let immigrants into this nation, period."

That debate at the federal level has frozen us from having any kind of rational policy, "so it falls to state governments and now to local governments to deal with the aftermath," he said.

Dislike of migrants is not new, he pointed out. In the 1940s there was prejudice against the wave of Irish immigrants, and against a wave of Italian immigrants in the 1880s (including, sometimes, by the Irish who had assimilated). The word "wop" used for the Italians derived from "without papers," he said. That wave included his great-grandfather. In the 1900s immigrants from eastern Europe, many of them Jews, were persecuted for being different.

"This is part of the American experience," he said.

He wrapped up his 20-minute talk by touching on an element "that goes beyond the secular to the spiritual."

Faith is important to some but not all people, he acknowledged, arguing that the Founding Fathers called for separation between church and state so that the government could not impose a specific religion on citizens.

"It doesn’t mean that we don’t take our religious philosophy into the actions that we take," he said. "I am influenced by my religion and I will tell you as a Christian, a Roman Catholic Christian, I am often lectured to by fellow members of my faith who are unhappy with certain positions that I hold on certain key issues which they feel the church’s positions are very clear on … and they believe the government of our country should follow those positions. ... We’re taught a lot of things in the context of church. We’re taught a lot of things in the context of sacred scriptures."

He introduced a reading from the New Testament by saying he thought it was "very instructive in terms of what we have to add to the discussion when we talk about economics, when we talk about logistics. When we talk about where the money is coming from and how we’re going to handle security."

The reading, from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, verses 31-46, is a famous passage about Jesus separating the "sheep" from the "goats" based on whether they fed the hungry, clothed the needy and invited the stranger in.

"Right now I would not trade having been born in Mount Vernon, New York, for having been born in a rural poverty section of South America or Central America," he said after reading it aloud. "I would not trade the opportunity to have a public education, the opportunity to go to college, the opportunity to find work and have a better life than my parents had. That is an opportunity granted to me by the stroke of luck by which I was born in the United States of America, the grandson and the great grandson of people who were born in Europe.

"That good fortune is not given to many other people. They live in countries where there is political turmoil. Where they will take your children as drug runners, as human shields for their criminal behavior," he said, adding that he could understand why a person would walk a thousand miles to seek a better life.

"Human compassion has to be met with pragmatism," he said. "We must understand that the United States cannot solve the problems of the world. But we cannot turn a blind eye either. We can’t say 'you don’t look like me and therefore I want nothing to do with you.'

"We have to find a way as human beings who are fallible to find a way through this," he said.

"We’ll talk more about this a little later in the week. But I ask you to think, think about what I’ve said. These words aren’t mine, these are eternal words. I will be long out of this position and long off this planet and those words will still matter.

"We have to determine, who are we? What do we believe in and what are we willing to put behind that belief? And if we’re not prepared to do that, if we’re prepared to speak words of faith that allude to compassion but do not provide compassion, then we’re being dishonest with ourselves."

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