Governor Kathy Hochul to Dispatch National Guard to Assist Adams With Migrant Tent City
Governor Kathy Hochul is prepared to dispatch the National Guard to assist in managing the contentious tent city for migrants that Mayor Eric Adams had planned but has now relocated.
According to the governor’s office, a unit of 100 reservists has been mobilized for deployment, and the troops “are ready to help” at Adams’ request.
On Tuesday, October 4th, Hochul spokesman Avi Small said, “When the city’s relief center is ready to open, the National Guard will offer logistical and operational support.”
According to a source close to the National Guard, the reservists chosen for the job were chosen based on their proficiency in Spanish.
On the same Tuesday, Bernadette Ferrara, a member of Community Board 11 and the head of the Van Nest Neighborhood Alliance, openly demanded that migrants be relocated outside the city using the National Guard.
In an opinion piece published by the Bronx Times, Ferrara, a prominent community leader in the Bronx, referred to the recent transfer of migrants flown to the liberal outpost of Martha’s Vineyard by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in an opinion piece.
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Ferrara wrote, “Our elected officials must demand that Governor Kathy Hochul calls in the National Guard to move these illegal border crossers to a military facility elsewhere in the state — just like the governor of Massachusetts did for Martha’s Vineyard.”
The tent city’s construction started on September 24th in the Orchard Beach parking lot and it was planned to open this week.
However, on October 3rd, Adams abruptly declared he was moving the stent shelters to Randall’s Island following flooding at the Orchard Beach parking lot when New York City was hit with remnants of Hurricane Ian.
Adams also reduced the tent city’s capacity from 1,000 cots to 500, where migrants would be inspected before being admitted to the overburdened shelter system in the Big Apple.
In a prepared statement released on Monday, Adams said, “We expect this site to open in approximately the same timeframe as the originally planned location, and we will continue to build out our options and explore additional sites as we handle this humanitarian crisis created by human hands.”
According to an exclusive article published by the NYPost last week, Adams was completing a deal with Norwegian Cruise Line to temporarily lodge migrants at Staten Island’s homeport. Adams was also reportedly considering a similar deal with the Estonian shipping firm Tallink.
At a city council committee meeting last week, Zach Iscol, the emergency management commissioner, stated that Hochul’s administration had promised to provide National Guard reservists “at least for the first 30 days” after the tent city opened.
