'They Are Now Our Guests': More Asylum Seekers Arrive In Westchester

YONKERS, NY — Mayor Mike Spano addressed the arrival of the growing refugee crisis in Westchester County — hours later, another bus of migrants arrived from New York City to be housed in a Yonkers hotel.

While Spano welcomed the asylum-seekers, he had harsh words for New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

"As you all know, during the night, the refugees have arrived here in the City of Yonkers at the Ramada Inn on Tuckahoe Road, again with no plan, with very little notice, obviously no resources, additional resources being provided to the local community to deal with this influx," Spano said in an address on Tuesday. "But anyway we have now 14 families mostly single women with babies. We can have the potential of up to a hundred at the Ramada Inn."

Shortly after the mayor spoke to the press, one more busload of families arrived at the hotel. Spano made clear that his issue is not with the families seeking sanctuary in the U.S., but with the way that fellow lawmakers seem quick to pass the burden to others, without concern for the inevitable fallout.

"To my understanding, there will be no additional sites here in the city of Yonkers. But, as I've said, they are now our guests and Yonkers is an immigrant city and we will treat the refugees with dignity and provide them the support that they need," Spano said. "At the same time, we're going to drive for accountability from our friends to the south in New York and our friends at the state capital in Albany because I'm certain the billion dollars that was provided to New York City to help deal with this crisis wasn't provided just to do what other communities have done which is to ship from one place to the other."

Spano told those gathered that New York City's current course of action isn't just unworkable — it's unjust.

"That's not fair to the the asylum seekers," Spano said. "It's certainly not fair to the residents of the city of Yonkers and so we have work to do. We're going to do that but we also, I'm also going to continue to call on the governor to work to come up with a solution for local governments because this as we all know is not going, the problem is not going to go away."

Spano said that while New York City is paying the expense of feeding and housing the migrant families, there are a slew of other expenses that will be left to local taxpayers to foot the bill.

"We don't know what Department of Social Services will have to deal with or the county executive has been on my side in talking to me every day for the past this entire weekend," Spano said. "We don't know though. We are being told that there are no school-age children coming at the moment, but we also know that that can change at any time. And you have as many as 100 families I don't know how many chidren could be associated with 100 families. I don't know what the average is but I do know that if you're talking about children who don't speak English, who've had no formal education."

The mayor said that it is especially troubling that the Adams administration seems to be targeting less affluent areas when relocating refugees from the city.

"It's going to continue and we're going to have to come up with ways of making this happen," Spano said. "I had recently had a phone call with someone in the mayor's office where I asked where else the individuals are going, where else are families going in Westchester and I got 'well you know how expensive it is outside of Yonkers.' Again, so what's happening here is this means that the families will only go to the poorer communities and certainly that's you know something that as a budgetary issue is something that we have to deal with because we don't know what the health care needs are."

Superintendent of Yonkers Schools Edwin Quezada echoed many of the mayor's concerns.

"We need an action plan that shows support for the residents of this city as they endure something that they have not dealt with before and at the same time support and empathy and care for new guests to our city," Quezada said. "This is new to our work as well. So we in the education system, we are preparing. You know, what's the academic support that they need? What is the social emotional support that they need? Where do we have capacity to be able to receive these young people when they are ready to enter school? The fact is that they are now members of this community and as members of this community, we are a caring community that supports these individuals who need us most. So the mayor, the council, they are ready to support them but so will the educational system."

SEE ALSO:

• Asylum-Seekers Arrive At Westchester Hotel From NYC Overnight
• 'A Complete Outrage,' Candidate Urges Lawsuit In Migrant Clash
• NYC Will Send Asylum Seekers To Westchester In Coming Days
• Latimer Cites History, Bible Over NYC Migrant Controversy