Malliotakis to introduce legislation banning migrant housing in national parks, including Ft. Wadsworth

Most of the Island’s elected political delegation, led by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn), gathered outside Fort Wadsworth on Wednesday to decry the possibility of the site being used to house some of the tens of thousands of migrants in the city’s care.

Malliotakis said she’ll be introducing legislation, which she said has bi-partisan support in the House of Representatives, to ban migrant housing in any national park, like Fort Wadsworth, or Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, which city and state officials announced this week would be used for the purpose.

With President Joseph Biden in office and Democrats in control of the Senate, it’s unclear how far Republican-introduced legislation will make it at the federal level, but Malliotakis said she hopes they would take action of their own to address the crisis.

“What we’re trying to say is ‘secure the border.’ We would love for [Sen. Charles] Schumer to actually pass our bill, and if you don’t like our bill, for whatever reason, pass your own bill, but do something,” she said.

Crossings at the southern border, where most of the migrants have come from, have declined in recent months, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security, but the city has continued to see an influx, because of travel from other states, according to city officials.

“Look, we’re a compassionate city, but this is ridiculous. This is beyond compassion. This is ludicrous,” Malliotakis said. “You’re seeing people recognize that this has gotten completely out of control.”

More than 100,000 migrants have made their way to the five boroughs since April of last year with nearly 60,000 still in the city’s care.

Kenneth Spencer — chair of the U.S. Park Police Fraternal Order of Police, the union representing federal Parks Police — joined the elected officials raising concerns about the public safety aspect of housing migrants in federal parks.

Spencer has repeatedly said the agency is short-staffed and said adding migrants would just further the strain on an already burdened group of police.

“Us being as short as we are, from a policing standpoint it’s dangerous and irresponsible to put a migrant camp right in the middle of Staten Island,” he said. “We already struggle to make ends meet on day-to-day operations, so it’s going to be tough for us to handle something like that.”

CITYWIDE EMERGENCY SITES

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has set up more than 200 emergency sites around the city, including several on Staten Island at hotels and the former site of the Richard H. Hungerford School on Tompkins Avenue. The possible Fort Wadsworth site and a confirmed site for up to 300 at the former St. John Villa Academy have sparked a new bipartisan push from local elected officials.

At the Wednesday press conference outside Fort Wadsworth, which is controlled by the federal government, Borough President Vito Fossella, State Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton (D-North Shore/South Brooklyn), Assemblyman Michael Reilly (R-South Shore), Assemblyman Michael Tannosis (R-East Shore/South Brooklyn), Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo (R-Mid-Island), City Councilman Jospeh Borelli (R-South Shore), and City Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island) joined Malliotakis.

Representatives for the offices of State Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-South Shore) and District Attorney Michael McMahon were also in attendance at the press conference. All of Staten Island’s elected officials, including Assemblyman Charles Fall (D-North Shore/Brooklyn/lower Manhattan) and City Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks (D-North Shore) signed a letter last week calling for the federal government not to allow the city to use Fort Wadsworth for migrant housing,

On Wednesday, Borelli took things a step further calling on the city to begin refusing entrance to new arrivals, many of whom have made their way to the city through the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

“The first thing that has to happen is at the Port Authority Bus Terminal where the message has to be ‘stop, turn around.’ Maybe give them a bottle of water,” he said. “Without the stop, it will never ever stop, because the plan here is just to continue this in posterity forever and ever.”

Currently, the city’s right to shelter policies, established through decades of legal actions, mandates that anyone seeking shelter in the five boroughs must be granted it regardless of citizenship status.

Adams’ administration, which estimates a $12 billion price tag to deal with the crisis over the next few years, has taken its own legal action seeking to limit the right to shelter, and has won the support of the City Council’s most conservative members, including Borelli and Carr, who style themselves the “Common Sense Caucus.”

“On May 22, 2023, Assistant Corporation Counsel Jonathan Pines wrote to the court that New York City was in crisis due to an unprecedented influx of migrants, which had compelled the city to extend itself ‘further than its resources will allow,’” the caucus wrote in their letter to New York Supreme Court Judge Erika Edwards. “In the three months since, this crisis has escalated and the need for relief from this consent decree is more urgent than ever. Our city is long past its breaking point.”

MASSIVE PROTEST PLANNED

Following their Fort Wadsworth press conference, most of the elected officials met with locals near the former St. John Villa Academy, where a massive protest is planned Wednesday evening against migrant housing at the site.

A possible migrant site at a former assisted living facility in Midland Beach has led to massive protests over the past two weekends, including one on Sunday that led to the arrest of local conservative activist Scott LoBaido and former Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa.