Officials vow to fight NYC mayor’s bus plan

NEW YORK >> Officials representing a suburban New York county where New York City’s mayor wants to send migrants for a four-month hotel stay vowed to fight the plan Monday through fines and a state of emergency.

“We are not equipped to humanely assist these individuals, which eventually we’re going to have to do,” Rockland County Executive Ed Day said at a news conference where he was joined by U.S. Rep Michael Lawler and other officials opposed to the plan.

Day, a Republican, called Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to bus up to 300 single adult male migrants to hotels in Rockland and neighboring Orange counties “the same as throwing people out to the middle of the ocean who can’t swim and saying ‘go to shore.’ It can’t work.”

Lawler, a Republican whose Hudson Valley district includes Rockland County, said he was “vehemently opposed to this plan which would shift the cost for housing, food and health care for folks who may be here illegally on to Rockland County and our municipalities.”

Adams, a Democrat, announced the plan Friday to bus migrants to the two counties north of the city on a voluntary basis. He said the program would help the city handle the more than 37,500 asylum seekers in the city’s care.

Adams announced the plan as cities across the U.S. prepare for a surge in migrants seeking asylum when a pandemic-era policy that permitted the expulsion of many migrants ends. Officials anticipate that the end of the immigration limits under Title 42 of a 1944 public health law will mean more migrants trying to cross the southern border.