New York town threatens to take action if state doesn’t empty out immigrants from its hotels

A Western New York town warned state officials that it would take action if the state didn’t follow through on emptying out hotels of immigrants.

Asylum-seekers have been housed in two hotels in Cheektowaga, a suburb of Buffalo, since June 2023. After two incidents of alleged sexual assault by asylum-seekers, local county officials said they would stop taking in immigrants and demanded the state vacate those from the hotels.

‘These folks have a right to an asylum hearing and some of these folks will be granted asylum and there are already productive members of the community.’

Cheektowaga Town Supervisor Brian Nowak said they did not intend to be anti-immigrant but wanted to enforce zoning laws at the hotels.

“Moving on from having them in hotels is one thing, but saying we want to send you back to Mexico or Venezuela or whatever, that’s a whole different story,” said Nowak.

“These folks have a right to an asylum hearing and some of these folks will be granted asylum and there are already productive members of the community that are living in these buildings,” he added. “Moving on from our hotels being used as encampments or shelters, yes, but not to say we don’t want migrants or immigrants as part of our society.”

On the same day as the vote from Cheektowaga, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that 25 hotels and shelters housing asylum-seekers in New York would close.

Adams told WKBW-TV that the hotels in Cheektowaga would be emptied of immigrants by Dec. 16 and 18.

“We’ve come a long way since the first buses from Texas arrived in our city over two years ago, when we were working around the clock to care for the thousands of people who were arriving every week,” said Adams.

Adams has faced fierce criticism for defending the city’s sanctuary city policies and then folding after Republican governors began to send immigrants to take advantage of their social safety net. He has since criticized the Biden administration for the immigrant crisis and demanded more help from the state.

“We are seeing real results from our hard work, including the ability to continue consolidating operations,” Adams added. “We continue to look closely at all of our shelters and will make all determinations based on what’s best for our city and those in our care.”

Many have said that voters turned against the Democratic Party in the election partly because of the panicked response to immigrants being sent to Democrat-controlled cities by Republican governors.

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