Half of New York City's hotel rooms are being occupied by illegal aliens and Democrat Mayor Eric Adams says the Big Apple's economy is already taking a hit.
“In order to address an onslaught, you have to have places you can put people. Almost half of all hotel rooms now are taken up by asylum seekers. Think about that. I’m not sure what it’s going to take before people hear what I am saying," Adams said in a media briefing on Wednesday in Harlem.
“New York City is the hotel capital. We’re the hotel capital — tourism, visitors, sporting events, graduations,” he added. “It’s a major economic engine for us. Almost 50% of those hotel rooms are being taken up by migrant asylum seekers.”
“Instead of moneys coming from people who are visiting us and spending and our tourism and our Broadway plays — instead of them using those hotels, we’re using those hotels,” Adams said.
The situation has become so dire that Adams reportedly was mulling whether to rescind New York's status as a sanctuary city.
Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus claimed the mayor told elected leaders he was considering such a change, but Adams on Tuesday denied he intends to roll back New York’s sanctuary city status, the New York Daily News reported.
During an interview Tuesday morning on 1010 WINS, Adams responded to Neuhaus posting a video on Facebook where he said Adams told county executives that he wasn’t responsible for making New York City a sanctuary city and that he’s “also talking about going to court to change that” status.
“Let me be very clear on what I stated. We have [been] a sanctuary city for over 40 years, and when you think about ... the law that was put in place or the agreement that was put in place, no one anticipated having 4,200 people come in one week to the city,” Adams said.
“What we were going to court to deal with was the various executive orders that some of the county execs put in place to prevent us from having our entire state share this responsibility and burden,” Adams continued, referring to the migrant crisis.
The New York Post reported on May 12 that Adams has been sending some of the migrants upstate to stay in hotels, displacing homeless U.S. military veterans.
"Nearly two dozen struggling homeless veterans have been booted from upstate hotels to make room for migrants, says a nonprofit group that works with the vets," the report said. "The ex-military — including a 24-year-old man in desperate need of help after serving in Afghanistan — were told by the hotels at the beginning of the week that their temporary housing was getting pulled out from under them at the establishments and that they’d have to move on to another spot, according to the group and a sickened local pol."
“Our veterans have been placed in another hotel due to what’s going on with the immigrants,’’ said Sharon Toney-Finch, the CEO of the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation.
Toney-Finch said 15 of the veterans were kicked out of the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh about 60 miles north of New York City in Orange County — a new epicenter of the Big Apple’s migrant crisis since Adams began sending the city's overflow there against local officials’ wishes.
Five displaced veterans were split between two other local facilities — the Super 8 and Hampton Inn & Suites in Middletown, Toney-Finch said.
All 20 of the booted veterans have ended up at a Hudson Valley hotel about 20 minutes away, said Toney-Finch, who asked that the Post not name the site.
Membership . . . . Intelligence . . . . Publish
