The NYCLU has taken Rockland and Orange counties to federal court for their emergency orders blocking NYC from temporarily putting up migrants in local hotels. Let’s hope for a swift victory.

If you’re wondering why the policies are so self-evidently wrong, here’s a helpful exercise: imagine if the counties had issued practically identical orders, but, instead of applying to migrants, they applied to some specific ethnic or religious group. Let’s try an excerpt from Rockland’s emergency order: “No municipality may make contracts with persons, businesses, or entities doing business within the County to transport [Jews] to locations in the County, or to house persons at locations in the County for any length of time without the express permission of the County Executive.”

Doesn’t sound so good, does it? Before you protest that this is a totally different circumstance, answer this: why exactly is it different? If it’s a cost thing, then NYC committing to pay for the migrants’ accommodations should fix that issue. Rockland Executive Ed Day’s emergency declaration betrays some of his underlying motivation by bemoaning “sanctuary city policies and open border immigration policies,” laying bare his absolute ignorance of the dynamics at play and the fact that this is a politically-motivated decision using desperate people as cannon fodder for right-wing posturing.

Those motivations are further driven home by the fact that more than half of all counties in the state have declared states of emergency related to the migrants, even though the majority have received none and don’t appear to feature in any plans to be sent any by NYC. Gov. Hochul, are you planning to do anything beyond calling it unneighborly?

The counties’ wrongness doesn’t mean that Mayor Adams has been perfect. We opposed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s chaotic busing of migrants to NYC, and we oppose NYC’s apparently haphazard busing of migrants out to counties without proper coordination.

In any case, as local officials snipe, the feds that are notably AWOL. The Biden administration has been content to let us pay the bills. For shame.