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FIRST ON FOX: House Republican leaders on the Natural Resources Committee are probing the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) role in putting migrants on federal lands in New York.
In a letter despatched Monday to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who chairs the panel’s oversight subcommittee, cited interviews they performed with federal officers who confirmed DHS’s involvement in the choice to accommodate migrants at Gateway National Recreation Area’s Floyd Bennett Field, managed by the National Park Service (NPS).
While DHS, in response to the letter, intervened to make sure Floyd Bennett Field, in New York City’s Brooklyn borough, can be leased to the native authorities for migrant housing, the land is managed by the Department of the Interior (DOI) and NPS. In one interview, a senior DOI official informed congressional investigators that they “did what DHS asked us to do” after they moved ahead with the plan final yr.
“The Committee is deeply concerned with the Biden administration leasing NPS land for use as a migrant encampment, a use that is not only inconsistent with the National Park Service Organic Act, but publicly recognized as legally perilous by DOI,” Westerman and Gosar wrote to Mayorkas.
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House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, left, and Rep. Paul Gosar, the highest GOP member of the panel’s oversight subcommittee (Getty Images)
“Moreover, the Committee is concerned with the role DHS played in the process, particularly as you described it in the letters to Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul and as described to Committee staff by DOI and NPS officials,” the Republican lawmakers continued.
In August, Mayorkas despatched letters to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, hitting again on the officers over their dealing with of the surge of migrants in New York City, Politico reported on the time. He additional famous “structural issues” with New York’s dealing with of the disaster and implored the town and state to just accept a lease DOI despatched for the short-term use of Floyd Bennett Field to accommodate migrants.
“DOI seeks to finalize that lease as soon as you are ready,” Mayorkas wrote to Hochul and Adams, in response to Politico.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas holds a press convention at a U.S. Border Patrol station on Jan. 8 in Eagle Pass, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Weeks later, on Sept. 15, DOI and the native events executed the settlement to lease parts of Floyd Bennett Field’s property. Officials then constructed short-term housing on land alongside the shore of Jamaica Bay.
However, the Republican leaders have identified that, previous to the choice to lease the property, Hochul famous the DOI had itself argued such an motion would possible violate federal legal guidelines. The governor, who has referred to as for federal help in coping with her state’s migrant inflow, remarked one month prior that officers informed her workplace “they do not allow for use of shelter on any of their properties.”
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The Republicans have additionally probed how the White House Council on Environmental Quality seems to have allowed DOI to bypass the traditional eco overview course of mandated underneath the National Environmental Policy Act. The 1969 legislation requires federal companies to overview the environmental impacts of initiatives and proposals on federal land earlier than approval.
The Biden administration leased federal property in Gateway National Recreation Area’s Floyd Bennett Field, property managed by the National Park Service, to the native authorities. The property is getting used to quickly home migrants. (Getty Images)
Meanwhile, the housing facility erected at Floyd Bennett Field has been closely criticized by migrants as inhumane and, in response to a Venezuelan mom of three interviewed by The City, “like a hell.” Thousands of migrants on the encampment have been evacuated earlier this month and despatched to a New York City highschool, forcing the varsity to cancel in-person lessons.
The Natural Resources Committee’s ongoing investigation comes as migrants proceed to flood the southern border in file numbers and Republicans name for the Biden administration to make structural reforms to safe the border.
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In December, greater than 302,000 migrants have been encountered trying to cross the U.S. southern border, by far the biggest single month determine ever recorded. The quantity additionally introduced fiscal 2024 first-quarter numbers to 785,000 encounters, the best quantity ever recorded.
DHS did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
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