Activists and several elected officials gathered outside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office in the Capitol in Albany on Monday to protest the closure of two hotels housing several hundred migrants in the state's capital region.
New York City has a "right to shelter" law, requiring the city to provide shelter for anyone who asks for it and has no other options.
Protest organizers said they were advocating for Hochul to intervene to prevent the migrants’ eviction and to provide new state funding to shelter the migrants.
Speaking during the protest, Angelica Perez-Delgado, president of the pro-migrant nonprofit Ibero-American Action League, said, "Our need right now is to ensure that people in our hotels are not evicted. We need leadership and money from Gov. Hochul right now to fund at least six months of housing and related services."
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The migrants in Albany have been staying at a Ramada Plaza and Holiday Inn Express, both of which are being paid for by the New York City government and are set to close this month.
The hundreds in Albany are just a fraction of the 58,000 migrants being housed by the city of New York and the more than 223,000 migrants who have received taxpayer aid since 2022.
According to a report released this year by the New York City Comptroller’s Office, the city is projected to spend $987 million in two years on contracted hotels for tens of thousands of migrants. In total, the city is projected to spend more than $12 billion in responding to the migrant surge through fiscal 2025.
Since the election of President-elect Donald Trump last month, however, the city has moved to scale back its shelter program, closing some 12 shelters by the end of the year.
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been behind many of the moves to crack down on services for migrants, saying, "We have been wasting taxpayers’ money for far too long."
The city has already shuttered two hotels-turned-migrant shelters: the Hotel Merit in Manhattan and the Quality Inn JFK in Queens. Eight more shelters in Dutchess, Erie, Orange and Westchester counties are also set to close by the end of the year.
The protest against the closures was organized by a group called Columbia County Sanctuary Movement and a coalition of local nonprofits.
One of the protest leaders, Bryan McCormack, co-executive director of the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement, said migrant families "should not be forced to abandon their jobs or uproot their lives to return to New York City shelters."
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Speaking with Fox News Digital after the rally, McCormack said it is important to quickly find the migrants shelter as the harsh New York winter approaches. He also said New York City has used the crisis and migrants as a "political football" and "mismanaged the whole process."
He said the migrants being sheltered in the hotels have "already established gainful employment and a life here" and have "been a major contributor to New York's communities, cultures and economies."
"As somebody from upstate New York, I see every day how the immigrant community has impacted our lives as New York residents, from the food that's put on our table to the revitalization of our cities through construction to caring for sick and elderly folks throughout the pandemic and on to now," he said. "So, we hope that they will be able to continue to contribute to the capital region's culture and economy and make a full integration into our community."
New York State Assembly member Matt Slater, however, told Fox News Digital that the protesters outside Hochul’s office are "out of touch" with the real feelings of New Yorkers about the migrant crisis.
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"New Yorkers have had it," he said. "My constituents are demanding accountability. They want to make sure that we live in a state that respects the rule of law, that understands that illegal immigration is illegal. Hard stop."
According to a Siena poll published this week, a majority of New York voters (54% to 35%) say the state should support rather than oppose the upcoming Trump administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants in the state.
"It is a real concern for my constituents in the Hudson Valley," said Slater. "If people are protesting the fact that we're finally getting real about illegal immigration, they should open their own doors and welcome these people in. By all means, no one's stopping them. But to sit here and say that taxpayers should be fronting billions of dollars to continue to incentivize those who are breaking our laws is madness and insanity."
Slater said that though he is hopeful about the Trump administration clamping down on the border, he said New York state and city governments must also do their part.
According to Slater, New York, which is a sanctuary state, allocated $4.3 billion of taxpayer money in the latest budget to provide a host of services for migrants, like housing, clothing, food and cellphones.
"We cannot continue to allow a state government, a city government, to continue to incentivize illegal immigration by utilizing taxpayer dollars," he said. "It is wrong, and it must end."
