Buses of asylum seekers arrive in NYC, migrants housed at former police academy building
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- New York City leaders are calling the influx of migrants a crisis situation.
The asylum seekers that arrived in New York City are being housed at the former police academy, which was once used as a training facility, for at least a week.
Four buses arrived there just after midnight early Friday, bussing in families, men, and women. A fifth arrived later Friday morning.
Less than a dozen men arrived on the bus from Texas with their paperwork in hand, ready to call America home.
The debate on where to house the migrants is ongoing. The PBA president released a statement saying in part, "It is a significant security risk to house civilians in an active, working police facility."
Texas Governor Greg Abbott resumed uncoordinated and involuntary bussing of asylum seekers to democratic sanctuary cities.
"Mayor Adams is once again spreading falsehoods and outright lies. He knows full well these migrants willingly chose to go to New York City since his staff saw firsthand on their secret trip to Texas last year as migrants raised their hands to go on buses to his sanctuary city. Migrants also sign a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages upon boarding that they agree on the destination. And they were processed and released by the federal government, which dumped them in small Texas border towns. Mayor Adams, along with Mayor Bowser, Mayor Lightfoot, and Mayor Kenney, was proud to tout their self-declared sanctuary city status until Texas began busing migrants to New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Philadelphia to provide relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities," a spokesperson said for Governor Abbott.
The bussing is causing an issue to those cities.
"Last night, hundreds of asylum seekers arrived in New York City, after hundreds more arrived the day before, and thousands more in the days and week earlier. Once again, we are stepping up, in the absence of a national solution to this national crisis and are coming up with our own decompression strategy. New York City has single-handedly opened up 122 emergency shelters and eight large-scale humanitarian relief centers in the last year. But we are now receiving reports that a network of activists are organizing large-scale arrivals of asylum seekers to New York City via plane, bus, and other modes of transportation - taking advantage of city and state laws and luring them here with false promises. As a result, yesterday alone, we received hundreds of additional asylum seekers and we reached our limit of new shelters we could open. We currently have no other options but to temporarily house recent arrivals in gyms. We've been asking for support for a year, and now with Title 42 being lifted next week and with hundreds of asylum seekers already arriving in New York City every day, we desperately need federal and state support more than ever to quickly manage this crisis," said Press Secretary Fabien Levy on behalf of Mayor Adams.
The influx of asylum seekers is causing the White House to step in.
"As it relates to cities, I have said this yesterday, that you know, we are in regular communication with cities, mayors, and cities across the country who are dealing with this issue. The State Department and Department of Homeland Security put out a plan to manage regional migration flows and reduce unlawful migration," President Joe Biden said.
An extension for Title 42 was introduced this week.
Title 42 is set to expire next week.
The city anticipates it will spend $4.3 billion through the end of fiscal year 2024 on services for asylum seekers.
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