NYC Mayor sues rural counties over migrant emergency

AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is clearly growing desperate over the migrant crisis that is currently gripping the Big Apple. To his credit (sort of) he’s been trying almost everything under the sun to do something with the flood of illegal aliens who show up every day by the hundreds, demanding a place to stay under New York’s foolish sanctuary city laws. When he tried bussing them to suburban and rural counties he was met with emergency declarations and court orders preventing the action. More recently, he tried asking all of the city’s legal residents to turn their homes into Airbnbs for illegals. But now he’s returning to the idea of shipping them out to the counties and taking a page from the same playbook that they used against him. He’s attempting to sue the counties for refusing to cooperate. (Just The News)

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New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday announced that the city is suing 30 counties in the state over their issuance of orders seeking to stop the metropolis from sending excess illegal migrants to their territories.

The city has struggled to cope with a massive inflow of asylum seekers as Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott continues his policy of busing illegal migrants to sanctuary cities in a bid to highlight the Biden administration’s lax approach to border enforcement.

Adams has faced considerable pushback from upstate communities over his efforts to pass additional asylum seekers on to them, prompting the suit. The city currently shelters more than 47,000 migrants.

Adams is calling the refusal by the counties “xenophobic bigotry.” That’s the same line that liberals across the country invoke when they don’t get their way. He also said he wants to “ensure our state acts as one.”

But that’s where Adams is clearly either missing or ignoring the underlying reality. It’s not his business to “ensure” how the rest of the state acts. He’s the Mayor of Gotham, not the Governor of New York. He has no authority over what the counties do or don’t do. That’s why I’m not sure that the courts will show much sympathy for his complaint. Under what authority does the Mayor of New York City have the power to dictate what county supervisors decide to do in the best interest of their residents?

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New York City made the decision to declare itself a sanctuary city and pass a law declaring it must give shelter to anyone who asks. It is not the fault of the rural upstate counties that people took them at their word and began showing up to take them up on the offer. You might try to make the argument that the Governor of Texas shouldn’t be bussing all of these migrants to New York. But if they got on the bus of their own volition, what law was being broken? It’s not a crime to offer someone a free ride.

Adams needs to stay in his own lane and take care of the business of the Big Apple. If he wants the situation to change, he should work with the City Council to repeal their sanctuary laws and start turning people away. All he’s doing now is trying to make the whole thing Somebody Else’s Problem.

But just in case he does somehow succeed in court and begins shipping migrants around again, I have a suggestion and I already sent an email to our county executive about it. (The county where I live is one of the ones that refused and is being sued.) Accept the busload(s) of migrants. But have state troopers and every available ICE officer standing by when they arrive. Load them all onto a plane and send them to Mexico or wherever their country of origin is. Yes, it would cost some money, but it would send a message. Lead by example.

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