WASHINGTON — The White House said Monday that the Biden administration “strongly opposes” legislation sponsored by Republicans in the House that would prohibit the use of federal funds to provide temporary shelter to undocumented immigrants on federal lands .
THE the bill would prohibit federal money be used to provide shelter to noncitizens, including asylum-seeking migrants, on lands under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service.
“The administration opposes this legislation because it would significantly limit the ability of the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture to make decisions regarding the appropriate use of their lands and resources, even in the event of “emergency or other situations,” the White House said in a statement. A administrative policy statement.
The statement stopped short of a veto threat from President Joe Biden.
The House this week is expected to begin consideration of the bill, which was introduced by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., in late August. It is co-sponsored by more than a dozen House Republicans, including House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.
The bill would also specifically revoke a lease between the federal government and New York City for portions of Floyd Bennett Field in southeast Brooklyn along Jamaica Bay. In September, Mayor Eric Adams announcement that the government and the city reached an agreement on housing migrants on site. He said it would help some of the more than 113,000 asylum seekers who have sought refuge in New York since spring 2022.
Earlier this month, Adams visited the site and said in a video posted on that he did not have “the best conditions”, but said: “We are managing a crisis and we cannot say better than that we need help.”
In September, the Biden administration worried that New York City wasn’t doing enough to handle the influx of migrants, NBC News reported at the time. The Department of Homeland Security sent a team to assess the situation in August, and a senior DHS official familiar with the findings said at the time that the city had “no exit strategy” to ensure migrants could exit the accommodation system.
