Asylum seekers in Orange County settle in, meet allies and some foes

Asylum seekers occupying two hotels in the Town of Newburgh, in defiance of an emergency order issued by Orange County, received help Monday from legal organizations and immigrant advocacy groups, an aid worker said.

Camille Mackler, the executive director of Immigrant Arc, a legal advocacy network, told Gothamist the new arrivals took part in a “needs assessment” administered by her organization, regarding the timeline of their individual asylum cases, documents they have or may need, and other legal requirements.

Neighbors Link, an immigrant rights group based in Mount Kisco, also took part in outreach efforts to the asylum seekers, said Mackler. But that was only part of the reception. Mackler said she was standing outside one of the hotels – the Crossroads Hotel – when a car whizzed by and one of the passengers screamed out the window, "Get out of our hotels!"

Conditions in New York City aren’t great, and [migrants] are looking for better opportunity and better living arrangements.

Camille Mackler, the executive director of Immigrant Arc, a legal advocacy network

Inside were dozens of asylum seekers – single men from Senegal, Venezuela, Guyana, Mauritania and other countries. They had relocated on buses from New York City, despite an outcry from some upstate residents and officials. Nonetheless, Mackler said, some local groups and residents have gone out of their way to embrace the migrants.

“There's just a lot of desire to make sure that they get what they need and they feel welcome into what is very likely, for many of them, their new communities,” said Mackler.

“Conditions in New York City aren’t great, and [migrants] are looking for better opportunity and better living arrangements,” she said.

On Tuesday, State Supreme Court Justice Sandra Sciortino provided some additional comfort to the newcomers. She issued a temporary order allowing 186 asylum seekers staying at the Crossroads and nearby Ramada to remain, but barring additional newcomers, pending further agreement or court action. The order is effective through June 21.

The county and town of Newburgh sued in state court to bar New York City from sending asylum seekers to the northern suburban community. The city has been pressing suburban communities to share in providing for asylum seekers, more than 60,000 of whom have come to New York City in the last year.

“The city is a self-proclaimed sanctuary city; Orange County is not,” Orange County Executive Steven M. Neuhaus said in a Patch report. “We should not have to bear the burden of the immigration crisis that the federal government and Mayor (Eric) Adams created, and I will continue to fight for Orange County’s residents in regard to this important manner.”

The relocation has marked the latest twist in a yearlong saga, one that previously pit New York City officials against southern governors and now sees upstate counties increasingly bristling against the overflow of migrants into their communities.

Those tensions burst into view last week as fears grew about the end of Title 42, a pandemic-era law meant to reduce border crossings, which the Biden administration, city officials and others predicted would mean a surge in migrants coming across the Southern Border. Instead, the law’s expiration has seen crossings drop 50% in the time since, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Legal actions pile up

In addition to executive orders issued by 10 counties in opposition to the relocation plans initiated by Adams, a flurry of lawsuits have been filed, both by counties scrambling to stop the initiative as well as one by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has argued that attempts to prevent people from moving upstate were unconstitutional.

According to a complaint filed by Orange County against the Crossroads and Ramada hotels in Newburgh, both establishments “evicted all non-homeless persons” from their premises and “cancelled all bookings, present and future, for non-homeless.”

The effect, the county argues, is that each hotel has converted “completely from a hotel to a homeless shelter, in derogation of Orange County Executive Order Number 1 of 2023.”

Calls to the Crossroads and Ramada hotels in Orange County went unanswered.

While Orange County now has dozens of newly arrived migrants, the situation in neighboring Rockland County is markedly different.

Beth Cefalu, a spokesperson for Rockland County Executive Ed Day, said in a text message that no asylum seekers have been relocated to Rockland “to our knowledge.”

She attributed this to the rapidity with which temporary restraining orders were obtained last week, arguing that Orangetown “was proactive and filed their lawsuit getting a TRO Tuesday afternoon preventing the city from proceeding and then we filed ours same day but received the TRO thursday. So we have two layers of court orders they’d violate.”

Lawyers for the Town of Orangetown in Rockland County and the Armoni Inn and Suites are set to appear before a judge on May 30.

Meanwhile, Fabien Levy, a spokesman for Adams, continued to defend the city’s relocation of asylum seekers to upstate locations.

“As we’ve been saying for months, we are in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, having opened approximately 150 emergency sites, including eight large-scale humanitarian relief centers, to serve over 65,000 asylum seekers,” said Levy in a statement. “We received more than 4,200 asylum seekers last week alone and continue to receive hundreds of asylum seekers every day. We are opening emergency shelters and respite centers daily, but we are out of space.”

Mackler said she wasn’t in a position to weigh in on the legality of the relocations, but argued that the migrants would ultimately be good for upstate communities.

“We’re losing population in New York, in almost every county,” said Mackler, “so immigration is a way to keep us competitive, it’s a way to keep us growing, to keep us being prosperous.”

This article was updated Tuesday with information about new legal developments affecting asylum seekers in Orange County.