“Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.,” the bright-yellow fliers read in English and Spanish. Noting that New York is the most expensive place to live in the United States, the leaflets caution that there is “no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals.”
The city will also start giving 60 days’ notice to adult asylum seekers staying in shelters, after which they will need to reapply for a shelter placement.
New York City law protects the right to shelter, and the move could raise legal challenges, advocacy groups said.
The attempt “to dissuade immigrants from coming to New York City is cruel, unlawful, and flies in the face of New Yorkers’ values of compassion and care,” the American Civil Liberties Union of New York wrote on Twitter.
New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) defended the campaign at a news conference on Wednesday.
“New York City has done more than any other level of government” to accommodate migrants, he said. “But we cannot continue to absorb tens of thousands of newcomers on our own without the help of the state and federal government.”
The development is the latest in an ongoing dispute over immigration policy between Republican-led states and the Democratic strongholds that have provided migrants refuge. Since last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has sent thousands of migrants to New York and other cities — a move Adams criticized as using “innocent people as political pawns.”….