State of Emergency Declared as NYC Plans to Bus Hundreds of NYC Migrants to Rockland County

by M.C. Millman

Rockland County declared a State of Emergency Saturday due to New York City Mayor Eric Adam's decision to bus 340 of NYC's migrants into Rockland County. 

New York City arranged for the influx of hundreds of migrant men to be lodged at the Armoni Inn and Suites in Orangeburg for four months, with the expectation that the four-month stay will be followed by attempted integration into the community.

Rockland County enacted the State of Emergency in direct response to the NYC mayor's plan, including a statement released by Rockland County Executive Ed Day against New York City's plan, saying, "This county already has a housing crisis due to the lack thereof and lack of affordable housing options. This crisis is so extreme that Rockland has been unprecedently deputized by the State of New York to take over Building and Fire Code enforcement in the Village of Spring Valley.

"Sending busloads of people to this county that does not have the infrastructure to care for them will only compound that issue tenfold while straining support systems that are already at a breaking point."

Male migrants are also being sent to other counties, with sixty scheduled to arrive at a hotel in Newburgh in Orange County by Monday. 

"Our current system is not built to support large influxes of population seekers," says Department of Social Services Commissioner Joan Silvestri. "Social Services funding is also not appliable to undocumented individuals, so we have no financial support to help those without legal status."

"Congress and the president need to wake up and do what needs to be done by fixing our broken immigration system once and for all," Day concluded. "This is not about being anti-immigration, but as it stands, the system is incentivizing illegal immigration, which does nothing to support our infrastructure; rather, it is just draining taxpayer resources from the families already here and struggling, including homeless, disabled, seniors, low-income, and other vulnerable populations."

"Extreme actions warrant extreme measures," Day posted on social medai. "I warned the NYC Mayor that if you try to run us down, we will reach up and grab you by the throat. This State of Emergency declaration is the first of its kind in an inter-municipal scenario, and the hotel and any City personnel will be looking at the potential of arrest and/or daily fines of nearly $70,000 for violations of this edict. I promised that Rockland would not yield, so here we are. No wavering and no retreat."

Photo Credit: Flickr