Now that she’s been elected to a full time period, Gov. Kathy Hochul is extra open to discussing how state taxpayers might assist the Big Apple with its $1 billion migrant crisis — after insisting it was a federal problem throughout the marketing campaign.
Hochul revealed Friday that Mayor Eric Adams requested for emergency help from the state after apparently being rebuffed by the White House.
“Not officially, not officially,” she mentioned in response to a query from The Post.
“But we told you we’d have conversations about this in the next budget. We just haven’t had the official conversation.”
Hochul added that she informed Adams that the state “would be as helpful as we need to be.”
The governor’s remarks in Puerto Rico, the place she’s attending the annual Somos political conference, adopted Thursday’s revelation that town might be closing the controversial and costly migrant tent city on Randall’s Island and changing it with the Watson Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
Adams spent about $750,000 constructing the tent metropolis and an earlier one, at Orchard Beach in The Bronx, that was relocated due to potential flooding and group considerations.
City Hall has has refused to launch working prices and every other bills related to the 2 initiatives and their dismantling.
On Friday, two residents of the tent metropolis — which provides three meals a day, laundry service and a soft lounge with couches, flat-screen TVs and Xbox online game consoles — estimated that about 300 migrants have been residing there.
“They are going to send us to a hotel where it will just be you and another person in each room,” Venezuelan migrant Jesus Miguel Hernandes, 35, informed The Post. “It will be much better to have more privacy and more tranquility.”
Last month, Hochul obtained exasperated throughout a information convention when the topic of paying for town’s migrant-related prices got here up as she was attempting to fend off surging Republican challenger Lee Zeldin.
“We really are looking for a federal response to this – to take ownership of a crisis — and we’ll be there to help but this belongs to the federal government,” she mentioned on the time.
Those remarks got here as Zeldin warned that officers would “raise taxes” to pay for “sanctuary state policies” together with the $2 billion “Excluded Workers Fund” for unlawful immigrants who weren’t eligible for federal COVID-19 reduction checks.
On Friday, Hochul mentioned the stream of migrants to the Big Apple — now round 24,000 — “has not been increasing at all” since President Biden struck a deal to return Venezuelan migrants to Mexico.
Hochul additionally mentioned upstate cities would begin welcoming migrants as soon as they obtained work permits, which takes at the very least six months after they apply for asylum within the US.
“So, I’m getting calls from all over the state. Mayors are saying to people, ‘Come here, come here,” she mentioned. “So, but let’s just make sure they’re stabilized. They want to go there. They’re not pawns.”
In September, The Post solely revealed that Adams had asked the White House for at the very least $500 million in emergency federal funding to cope with the migrant disaster.
But that request has but to be granted and prospects are grim following Tuesday’s midterm elections and the probability that Republicans will regain control of the House and presumably the Senate.
Last month, Adams declared a state of emergency over the migrant disaster and mentioned it might value town $1 billion to offer housing and social companies.
As of Wednesday, greater than 23,800 migrants had arrived within the metropolis and greater than 17,500 have been being housed in 55 emergency shelters and the controversial tent metropolis on Randall’s Island, in response to City Hall.
Meanwhile, the chief of an Islamic home of worship that’s been sheltering Senegalese migrants from Brazil informed The Post on Friday that the tempo of arrivals had but to abate.
“We had 10 more Senegalese migrants arrive late last night and early this morning,” mentioned Imam Omar Niass of the Masjid Ansaru-Deen in The Bronx. “It is the most that have arrived in one day for two weeks.”
Niass — who final week sent more than 100 Senegalese migrants to the tent metropolis — additionally mentioned “I’m still getting so many phone calls saying ‘I’m coming,’ ‘I’m coming,’ ‘I’m coming.’”
“Some families in Senegal are calling me saying: ‘My son is at the border and he is coming to your mosque.’ I cannot say no to them,” he added.
Niass mentioned he was assured the extra arrivals could be welcomed on the Watson Hotel.
“I was struggling to look after these people and Eric Adams took 135 people off my hands in one shot,” he mentioned. “”I can’t cease praying for Eric Adams.”
A Senegalese migrant who flew from San Diego to JFK Airport on Thursday after crossing the border at Tijuana mentioned, “Of course, there are a lot more men from Senegal coming to New York.”
“Some of them are right now in detention on the border,” mentioned Cheikh Fam, 25. “There are more and more and more coming.”
Niass, who translated Fam’s phrases from Wolof to English, mentioned, “He saw New York on the TV and wanted to come here for a better life.”
“He knows America is more safe, more peaceful and a better life. He wants to change his last name to ‘New York,”‘ Niass mentioned.
Additional reporting by Nolan Hicks and Bernadette Hogan
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