NEW CITY- It has been almost two weeks since Rockland County Executive Ed Day declared a state of emergency in response to New York City’s plan to house 340 migrants at the Armoni Inn and Suites in Orangeburg.
“As stated in the order municipalities are ‘barred from unilaterally deciding to house and shelter individuals in their care by deporting them to Rockland County’,” explained County Attorney Thomas Humbach. “It goes on to say, ‘its sole purpose is to prevent other municipalities from foisting their own policies, including sanctuary city policies, costs, and responsibilities on Rockland County.’”
According to Day, the state of emergency was declared to prevent New York City’s decompression program from more than quadrupling the number of homeless in the county’s care.
Day points out that NYC’s current population is approximately 8.3 million, down from 8.8 million in April 2020, contradicting claims that there is no more space for migrants in the U.S.’s largest declared Sanctuary City.
“The fact that the largest city in our entire country believes Rockland, the smallest county in the State of New York, has the resources to undertake this just underscores the lack of planning that was done by the Adams Administration and every single emergency order declared across New York municipalities these last two weeks was done for the exact same reason,” explained County Executive Ed Day.
More than a dozen other counties have enacted similar emergency orders including Broome, Chemung, Cortland, Genesee, Greene, Herkimer, Oneida, Orange, Orleans, Oswego, Otsego, Rensselaer, St. Lawrence, Schuyler, and Tioga, in addition to the Town of Riverhead, Long Island and the Town of Fishkill in Dutchess County.
“These are the inhumane consequences being caused by the City of New York’s failure to plan for a crisis they knew was coming,” said County Executive Day.
The County’s lawsuit challenges the city’s lack of authority to establish a shelter in the County of Rockland and was granted a temporary restraining order by a judge. The City of New York lost their appeal to remove that temporary restraining order. Both parties are due in court for the lawsuit May 30th.
