Long Island leader refuses to let NYC move migrants into former NHL arena

A county leader on Long Island vowed Thursday that no migrants from New York City would be housed at a former NHL arena or anywhere else in Nassau County. 

“There is no plan for anywhere in Nassau County to house any migrants, including but not limited to, the Nassau Coliseum,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, said. 

“Nassau County is not a sanctuary county,” he added at Thursday’s press conference. “We are not inviting immigrants and migrants into the county that are here from south of the border and not using the proper and normal channels that have been used in the past. 

“Nassau County views this as a federal problem. Not a local problem. And there is no plan whatsoever to house any migrants within the borders of Nassau County. We want to make that clear because there’s been speculation about that. We’ve gotten a lot of constituent calls.

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“It is not going to happen here in Nassau County,” Blakeman insisted. “I’ve also been in contact with local school districts who have reiterated to me that they do not want a migrant program in Nassau County. Basically, their classrooms are full. They haven’t budgeted for any additional students, and they haven’t done any planning for additional students. In addition to that, with respect to social services, we are already operating at full capacity in social services, and we do not want to overburden our social services or any of the services we have.

“We also don’t want people here who haven’t been properly vetted because — as we’ve seen in other areas throughout the United States and here in New York State — there have been crime problems as a result of not vetting the people who were coming across the border.” 

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, a Democrat, said earlier this week that New York State ought to look at Nassau Coliseum to house asylum seekers. 

The coliseum was the original home of the New York Islanders in the 1970s, but the NHL team moved briefly to Barclays in Brooklyn in 2015-2016 before permanently relocating into the UBS Arena in Belmont, New York, in 2021. New York City has been mulling various sites to house migrants, including the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. 

In addition to Richards, Hazel Dukes, president of the state chapter of the NAACP and an ally of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, also had suggested the Nassau Coliseum open its doors to migrants, suggesting it would be ideal because it is not located next to any houses, the New York Post reported. 

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Adams on Thursday called on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, to issue an executive order preventing certain municipalities from refusing to accept asylum seekers from the Big Apple. 

Hochul’s attorneys condemned Adams’ response to the migrant process in a 12-page letter earlier this week. 

“To constantly go to court and find creative ways in local municipalities to say that they’re not going to take migrants, I think it’s unfortunate,” Adams said. “We’re hoping that the governor will put in place an executive order that would prevent this from having to go from location to location to a location. New York [City] just cannot continue to take this flow.

“I’m hoping people can imagine what it’s like to every week come up with housing for, you know, from 25 to almost 3,000 people, finding new places, sporting fields, recreational centers, hotels,” Adams added. “That is just not how you manage a city.”

Erie County over the weekend said it refused to take in more migrants after an asylum seeker allegedly sexually assaulted a woman working at a hotel housing the migrants in western New York. That was the second sex crime case in Erie County linked to an asylum seeker sent from New York City in two weeks.  

Unlike in Nassau County, Erie County, led by Democrat Mike Poloncarz, had welcomed the asylum seekers in June. 

“Some of these municipalities that have invited the migrants in by saying they are a sanctuary city or sanctuary county are now looking to farm these people out to other municipalities,” Blakeman said Thursday. “It’s kind of like you invite people to stay over your house, and they come over and you say ‘Well, we want you to stay with our neighbor.’ Is that fair to your neighbor?”