As we’ve been covering here for some time now, New York City has been erecting all manner of migrant shelters to handle the ongoing migrant crisis for the past year. The tab for all of this is already running into the billions of dollars, but the migrants are creating many problems beyond just budgetary woes. Residents have long since grown fed up with the invasion and the drain on local resources, particularly in the public schools. Next door to one shelter that was set up on Staten Island, some frustrated neighbors have had enough. On Monday, one neighbor set up a large concert speaker and an amplifier and began blasting messages at the migrant camp at more than 100 decibels in volume. The message was clear. You need to leave. You are being lied to by New York’s officials. Get out. And some of them immediately took the hint. (NY Post)

Migrants at a Staten Island shelter are being bombarded by a blaring 24/7 recording urging them to leave, claiming the site is rat- and mold-infested and that they “are being lied to by Mayor Eric Adams.”

The audio recording was being blasted from a professional speaker in five languages — English, Spanish, Ukrainian, Chinese and Urdu — at an ear-splitting level of 117 decibels Monday afternoon from the property of homeowner Scott Herkert next to the controversial former St. John Villa Academy-turned-migrant shelter…

More than a dozen asylum seekers were seen leaving the site — the scene of previous large protests attended by hundreds of residents — as the audio blared Sunday and Monday.

The neighbor who was doing this is named Scott Herkert and it sounds like it was a well-considered plan. Broadcasting the message only in English would probably have been lost on a majority of the invaders. But translating it into the five most common languages spoken by the migrants eliminated that problem. One female migrant reportedly recorded the message on her iPhone (where did she get a cell phone?) then grabbed her things, called an Uber, and left. Others followed, though many still remained by the evening.

As I said, it’s a clever plan, but is it legal? As it turns out, Herkert didn’t come up with the idea originally. Newsmax personality and former Independent city comptroller candidate John Tabacco thought it up. He describes it as being “legal psychological warfare.” I’m not sure if the courts would agree. Whether you’re trying to drive away migrants or just throwing a party, most residential areas have noise ordinances that set limits on high-volume sounds and the times such things can happen. And I’m fairly sure 117 decibels is well above any posted limits. The police did show up and ask Herkert to turn it down a bit, but they didn’t order him to stop.

I’m not sure how I feel about this turn of events. What Herkert is doing seems to be riding the line between an example of free speech in a nonviolent protest and a form of vigilanteism. There have been plenty of protesters showing up at the camp and protesting the presence of the migrants, which is totally understandable. But they’re just chanting the way most protesters do. Adding a JBL Professional 430-watt speaker into the mix feels like it’s turning the dial up to eleven.

I would like to see the migrants be gone also, of course. But I would like them to be removed by the government via legal means. Detain and deport them as we have always traditionally done. (Do background checks and sort out the criminals first, though.) This audio attack feels kind of wrong. This isn’t entirely the fault of migrants. Most of the non-criminal migrants were lied to when they arrived in the country, as John Tabacco explains in the linked article. They were told that if they went to New York they would all get hotel rooms and jobs and free services.

Just chasing them away with an amplifier doesn’t solve anything. All they will do is go to a different shelter and become “somebody else’s problem.” They’ll still be in New York and they’ll still be draining resources. They need to be removed from the city and, if possible, the country. And that’s the job of government, not the neighbors.