New York City is feeling the pain communities along our southern border have been feeling for years. On Sunday, a record nine buses from Texas arrived, each containing 40-50 migrants. Those busloads appear to be part of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star,” the state’s program for dealing with the massive influx of “asylum seekers” flooding in from Mexico. The previous day, Saturday, another six buses had arrived in the Big Apple from El Paso, part of a separate program of that city to deal with the crisis.
Between early August, when the busing began, and last week, more than 11,600 migrants had arrived in NYC, prompting Mayor Eric Adams to declare that the city’s shelter system was “at the breaking point.” The city government has opened 23 “emergency hotels” to handle the influx, but all of them now appear to be full. Ditto the city’s largest shelter for single men–the Bellevue Men’s Shelter at 30th Street and First Avenue–which is maxed out and said to be a “tinder box” ready to blow violently at any time.
Adams is considering various ideas to handle a crisis he had thought the city immune to. On Tuesday, September 13, he discussed a plan suggested by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of moving the migrants upstate to places like Niagara Falls and Binghamton, which would likely qualify those cities for federal aid. A few days later, the mayor floated the idea of housing the migrants on cruise ships, a plan once considered by the Bloomberg administration but never implemented. Adams has so far provided no details as to how that might work.
All this turmoil in the North, far from the overrun border in the South, has taken the sanctuary-happy officials there by surprise. In addition to the NYC-bound buses from Texas and Arizona, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida infuriated Massachusetts elites last week by sending a mere 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, home of the Obamas. City fathers and mothers there nearly freaked out over that one and promptly ushered the newcomers off the island.
The collective northern freak-out is subject to continue unless and until Washington does its job. Don’t hold your breath.
For more, see the Daily Mail.