1,000 migrants take N.J. detour
Secaucus mayor sez 11 buses have made dropoffs in town in wk.
About 1,000 New York-bound migrants have arrived in New Jersey by bus over the past five days, the mayor of Secaucus said Wednesday, a number reflecting the speed at which Texas has appeared to reorient its busing program to skirt city rules limiting migrant transports.
Mayor Michael Gonnelli, whose small town of Secaucus has been at the center of the New Jersey migrant bus surge, said 23 buses have arrived across New Jersey since the weekend. Eleven buses have dropped off their travelers in Secaucus, he said.
Gonnelli said 1,017 migrants in total have reached the Garden State during the busing surge, and all but 64 have continued by train into New York City.
“While at the moment the impact on our town has been minimal, I plan to do everything I can to be prepared and do what is best for our community,” Gonnelli said in a statement.
The statement did not address suggestions by Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul that New Jersey municipalities institute their own rules limiting when and how chartered buses filled with asylum seekers can arrive at their doorsteps.
The Secaucus Junction train station, which is less than 4 miles from Midtown Manhattan, has served as a primary dropoff point for the migrant buses. But some of the dropoffs have come much farther from the city.
At least two buses arrived Sunday in Trenton, New Jersey’s capital city, which is on the Pennsylvania border.
Kayla Mamelak, a spokesman for Adams, declined to comment on the new data beyond emphasizing that the mayor believes Secaucus should institute an executive order similar to the city’s.
Last week, Adams issued an executive order barring migrant buses from the city except during 210-minute windows on weekday mornings. The city said enforcement of its policy began on Friday. Under the rule, buses are also required to give the city 32 hours’ notice before their arrival.
Adams said the policy, mirroring a somewhat less restrictive rule in Chicago, is intended to bring order to the chaotic process by which Texas has sent asylum seeker-filled charter buses streaming into Midtown Manhattan for more than a year.
But Republican-led Texas has apparently sought to get around the rule by dropping migrants off at train stations in the New Jersey suburbs, adding another element of chaos to a crisis that has carried an estimated 165,000 asylum seekers to New York City since spring 2022.
During the crisis, many asylum seekers fleeing poverty in Central and South America have flooded across the southwestern border and then headed to New York City, which has a unique rule offering shelter to anyone who asks for it.
Texas, which has reported busing more than 33,000 of those migrants to New York, has not publicly confirmed that it is sending buses to New Jersey. But Adams’ administration has said Texas is behind the transports and has castigated the state’s governor, Greg Abbott.
“He just wants to create chaos,” Adams, a Democrat, said at a news briefing Tuesday, describing the Republican governor. “We’re dealing with a person who just wants to disrupt.”