Four Republican New York lawmakers ripped Gov. Kathy Hochul‘s (D-NY) request to President Joe Biden for more federal funds and access to more federal lands to deal with the migrant crisis in her state.
“Rather than calling on President Biden to end his executive orders which created this crisis in the first place and secure our nation’s border, your and New York City Mayor Adams’ repeated decisions to continue saddling New Yorkers with this problem through the implementation of failed policy have ushered in chaos across our state,” the lawmakers wrote.
RETAIL THEFT DELIVERS AN ECONOMIC BLOW FOR COMPANIES AND COMMUNITIES
The letter to Hochul was signed by Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) and Nicholas Langworthy (R-NY) on Wednesday.
Hochul visited the White House Wednesday afternoon to meet with President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, in a closed-door meeting to address the migrant crisis.
“Your request for increased federal funding to add additional shelters and permission to use federally owned lands as sites for more encampments is reckless,” the letter said.
The GOP lawmakers added, “Your actions at the state level have only further incentivized illegal immigration and encouraged more migration that we cannot support in New York State. We urge you to end these senseless policies and call on your fellow Democrats in the Senate to pass the House’s Border Security bill and end this out-of-control crisis once and for all.”
Malliotakis posted the letter to Hochul on social media.
“Right now, Governor Hochul is at the White House to ask for more money and federal land to open more migrant shelters & encampments. She should be telling POTUS to secure the border & end this madness!” she wrote in her post.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed the details of the meeting Wednesday afternoon, stating that the meeting between Hochul and Zients would look into “communities who are hosting asylum-seekers and ways we are working together to increase access to work authorization.”
Hochul’s White House meeting comes as the governor and New York City Mayor Eric Adams have continued to criticize one another’s handling of the crisis. The mayor has been blasting the governor for rejecting his plea to relocate immigrants to communities across the state.
Last week, the governor explained her reasoning for rejecting the city’s request.
“In 1981, the city of New York and the Coalition for the Homeless signed an agreement that the city would provide shelter to anyone who seeks it. This is an agreement that does not apply to the state’s other 57 counties, which is one of the reasons we cannot and will not force other parts of the state to shelter migrants,” she said.
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote in a letter to Hochul on Sunday that his agency had identified 11 federal sites across New York that could operate as potential shelters.
“Our requests from the federal government remain the same, and quite frankly, unaddressed,” Hochul’s spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak responded to Mayorkas on Monday.
