Photo by Joanne Beck.
A New York City lawsuit so fresh that Genesee County Manager Matt Landers had yet been able to review the entire scope of it before providing comment Wednesday afternoon hits up 30 upstate municipalities, including Genesee County, seeking to invalidate their executive orders barring undocumented immigrants from entering their locales.
Landers had first issued a State of Emergency on May 17 “out of an abundance of caution” after word had it that busloads of immigrants were potentially being sent this way. Locally it began first with Orleans County, followed by Genesee, and one by one, counties began to jump on board with their own executive orders throughout Western New York and beyond.
Filed on Wednesday, the lawsuit claimed that those emergency orders obstructed NYC’s efforts to relocate migrants “in a manner that is explicitly permitted by law and required by a statewide emergency,” according to a news release.
The lawsuit asks the state Supreme Court to invalidate the emergency orders filed by the counties under the grounds that they are unconstitutional. It also asks to prohibit the locales from taking steps that "restrict or frustrate" New York City's efforts to address a statewide emergency, which Gov. Kathy Hochul declared on May 9.
The lawsuit claims the emergency orders are unconstitutional because the orders seek to impede the rights of people who are legally within the borders of the United States as asylum seekers to travel and use public accommodations. The suit argues that the prohibitions are impermissible because they target people based on their national origin, citizenship, or immigration status, which violates the Constitution.
Moments prior to Landers issuing the county’s State of Emergency in May, the Legislature conducted an executive session to discuss the matter after Orleans County declared its own emergency. That seemed to be the tipping point, Landers had said at the time.
“Well, a lot of it was just meetings with various stakeholders; Orleans County issuing their state of emergency was probably a prompt. Because of that, we took notice of that. There was a lot of speculation that raised our concerns about how easily a group of asylum seekers could end up at our doorstep without us even knowing,” Landers said. “So I guess it was our vulnerability that came to light of how simple and how easy and how fast that could happen, that we wanted to have this in place, in case that were to happen.
“So that was probably some of the prompts that happened throughout the day that caused us to take this action,” he had said.
“This is more to get a better handle on control in Genesee County and have the situation to an abundance of caution to be able to respond to a situation where we're not aware of asylum seekers coming to our community, there’s channels out there, and I do have confidence in the governor's office, through their representative, that they would try to reach out to us if there was a group that was heading to Genesee County, but there's different avenues of which that they can come from and it's not all through the governor's office,” Landers said. “So I am in consultation with the governor's office and, and the representative has been very forthcoming and upfront with me, and I think we've got a great working relationship. But that's only one piece of the puzzle. So the state of emergency is kind of trying to cover multiple scenarios, you know … And, again, we'll evaluate the state of emergency in the next five days and see if we've covered everything, and maybe we strengthen it, modify it, or let it expire.”
The Local State of Emergency was declared for Genesee County due to New York City's program to rapidly increase the number of migrants in this County to unsustainable levels, he had said.
“Pursuant to NYS Executive Law § 24, when a State of Emergency is in effect, the County Manager may promulgate local emergency orders to protect life and property or to bring the emergency situation under control.
Fines were threatened, especially to local hotels and motels that might consider taking in any busloads of immigrants, of up to $2,000 a person.
By the time the county had extended the executive order for the third round, Batavia First Presbyterian Church stepped up and offered to provide comfort in the form of food, clothing and/or shelter for any immigrant in need.
Landers had said that could create issues for the county, and he asked that church leaders reach out to discuss the situation with him.
Landers said that he would respond to The Batavian's request for comment once he was more familiar with the lawsuit.
