Gov. Hochul turns up heat on President Biden over migrant crisis

Gov. Kathy Hochul is calling on President Joe Biden to provide formal federal assistance in response to thousands of migrants seeking shelter in New York, marking an escalation to pressure the White House into taking action.

Hochul, a Democrat, delivered a rare livestreamed address from the state Capitol on Thursday, in which she directly blamed the federal government and its lack of a comprehensive border policy for the issues created by a wave of thousands of asylum-seekers arriving in New York City.

“This crisis originated with the federal government and must be resolved by the federal government,” Hochul said in her speech.

In an accompanying letter to Biden, Hochul asked the federal government to provide the state funding in a variety of ways — including reimbursing the state for the cost of deploying National Guard members to staff more than 50 shelters throughout New York City.

The governor’s main request to the president, a fellow Democrat, largely mirrors what she and New York City Mayor Eric Adams have been requesting for months: a federal order making it easier for asylum-seekers to receive immediate authorization to legally work.

To do that, Hochul called on Biden to grant “temporary protected status” to some countries and extend it further in others, like Venezuela. Such a move would allow people who entered the U.S. in recent months and years to receive temporary work authorization without first having to wait 180 days, like most asylum-seekers.

Until then, Hochul said she’s asking for federal funding and space to shelter newcomers until they can obtain housing on their own. And she’s seeking a variety of other assistance from the federal government, including money to cover the cost of testing migrants for illnesses and providing them vaccines, as well as additional funding for school districts that are receiving a surge of migrant students.

She also called on the federal government to make more Section 8 housing vouchers available to people without homes in order to get them out of shelters and into permanent housing, which could free up space for migrants in homeless shelters and other emergency housing.

“The reality is we’ve managed thus far without substantive support from Washington, despite the fact that this is a national and inherently federal issue,” Hochul said.

The White House issued a statement saying the Biden Administration will continue to coordinate with the city and the state. As for the additional funding requests, the White House said the decision is up to Congress.

"Only Congress can provide additional funding for these efforts, which this Administration has already requested, and only Congress can fix the broken immigration system," the statement reads.

As part of her speech, Hochul also announced the state Department of Labor would launch a program to place asylum seekers in jobs as soon as they are eligible to work.

Hochul’s speech came as she continues to face pressure to take a more active role in finding housing for migrants, both from the Adams administration and organizations like the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless.

At the same time, the city is asking the state to help resettle as many as 3,000 migrants across other parts of the state that may be less inclined to accept newcomers, creating political landmines for Hochul and other Democrats to navigate as the 2024 elections and balance of power in Congress hangs in the mix.

The Adams administration has already sent buses of migrants to upstate cities and towns, causing tensions among local officials who say they were blindsided by the move and they lack the resources or infrastructure to care for the newcomers.

On Tuesday, the city’s lawyer wrote a letter to the state outlining a list of additional sites, in places like Long Island and upstate, that Hochul could make available for use as migrant shelters.

“In our response, we’ve identified areas of focus where additional state support can truly make a difference,” said Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Adams, in a statement. “That includes providing and operating state-owned sites inside and outside of New York City that are viable shelter locations, expanding and taking active ownership over the upstate resettlement program, increasing funding for tools that help open capacity in our shelter system, and more.”

She added that the administration would continue to work with the governor to address the crisis and reiterated its demand for Washington to declare a federal state of emergency and expedite work authorizations.

The speech also came as Hochul’s administration is finalizing a lease agreement with the federal government for space at Floyd Bennett Field, a former naval airfield in southeast Brooklyn where the state intends to shelter up to 2,000 single adult migrants.

Jackie Bray, the commissioner of the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, said she does not anticipate Hochul’s latest request will complicate those negotiations, which she said are going well.

The Adams’ administration says more than 104,000 migrants have sought shelter in New York City since spring of last year. Of those, 59,300 remained in the city’s care as of Sunday, according to Anne Williams-Isom, deputy mayor for health and human services.

The disagreements between Hochul and Adams’ administrations are playing out in private court conferences tied to a landmark case that established the city’s “right to shelter” mandate in 1981, which requires the city to provide shelter to anyone who seeks it and sets minimum housing standards. As part of that process, the state and city traded court-ordered letters in recent days laying out their qualms with one another and how they’ve handled the ongoing crisis.

Both Adams and the organizations advocating for migrants want Hochul to issue a statewide executive order prohibiting counties from refusing to accept new arrivals of migrants, something several upstate counties have done in recent months. Supporters of the idea say it would clear the way for a statewide strategic response and help alleviate the burden on New York City, which has struggled to find shelter for the newcomers who continue to arrive in the five boroughs.

But Hochul has refused to do so.

In her speech on Thursday, she argued the right-to-shelter mandate is unique to New York City and doesn’t extend beyond the five boroughs, though some advocates claim otherwise since the mandate is based on language in the state constitution.

Instead, Hochul’s strategy has focused more on opening large-scale shelters in the city itself — at places like the campus of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, Randall’s Island and, eventually, Floyd Bennett Field.

Hochul said she believes it’s clear other parts of the state do not have such a mandate, which is “one of the reasons we cannot, and will not, force other parts of the state to shelter migrants, nor are we going to have these migrants move to other parts of the state against their will.”

In a joint statement on Thursday, the Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless said they agree with Hochul’s call for more federal assistance, but added that it doesn’t absolve the state of doing more to help in the near term.

“(G)iven the political gridlock in Washington stymieing a national solution, more state support is urgently needed now to prevent people from being left to languish on local streets as the constitutional provisions on which the right to shelter is based apply to the state as well as the city,” the statement reads.

Elizabeth Kim contributed reporting.

This story was updated to include additional details about the governor's request, a response from the White House and statements from the Adams administration, the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless.