MONTGOMERY- While some municipalities in the Hudson Valley last summer declared themselves sanctuary communities, welcoming migrants from the southern border to their municipalities, one Orange County community has just done the reverse.
The Village of Montgomery is now an “un-sanctuary community.” By a majority vote on Tuesday evening, the village board of trustees voted to give their village that status.
The resolution was proposed by Trustee Michael Hembury, a candidate for mayor in the March 19 election.
“The plane landed at Orange County Airport about six months ago and I don’t want to wake up in the morning and find out that our senior center or our teen center or our elementary school is filled with migrants,” he said on Wednesday. “We have to protect this community, so we are ‘officially’ an unsanctuary city, or village.”
Hembry’s opponent in the mayoral election, Trustee Randi Picarello, sought to table the resolution.**
**The previous version of this story incorrectly reported that Trustee Picarello voted against the resolution when she actually voted to table the resolution. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
