Kathy Hochul Needs to Explain Herself

“We want people to come here, despite where they came from or despite the circumstances that drove them to this country and to this state,” New York governor Kathy Hochul said in December 2021. “You are welcome with open arms, and we will work to keep you safe. We will not only house you but protect you.”

Hochul’s remarks referred explicitly to New York’s efforts to resettle Afghan refugees, but neither the governor nor her administration were as circumspect when conveying “our message to the world,” which was to “send us your people, send us those who need the cloak of comfort.” Those remarks follow efforts by her administration to shore up New York’s “sanctuary” policies for migrants, which that same year were bolstered to include penalties even for New Yorkers who dare threaten to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enforce U.S. immigration law. “This legislation will protect New Yorkers from bad actors who use extortion or coercion due to their immigration status and make our state safer against vile threats and intimidation,” the governor said in a statement announcing that new initiative.

When sanctuary policies were a cost-free sop to fringe progressives, Hochul was happy to couch her extremism in poetic language and heap moral opprobrium on those who objected. But the influx of migrants into almost every American municipality is no longer a cost-free proposition — politically, at least. Hochul has, therefore, pared back her pandering accordingly.

“A migrant crime wave is washing over our city,” New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban told reporters in February. The New York Times took issue with the assertion. “Quantifying crimes committed by migrants is nearly impossible because the police are not allowed to ask about a suspect’s immigration status,” the paper reported. An increasing incidence of criminal violence and robbery could only be attributed primarily to migrants anecdotally. Still, there are a lot of anecdotes.

For example, NYPD sources told the New York Post in February that “the brutal Venezuelan ‘Tren de Aragua’ gang has moved into New York by having its members cross the southern border and claim asylum” and is responsible for a recent spate of “moped robberies” and assaults on both police and civilians. From shoplifting to stabbings and attempted murder, recent migrants to New York City, in particular, have kept the NYPD busy. And while the city’s papers are quick to note that only a small number of the more than 170,000 migrants and asylum-seekers flooding the city engage in criminal activity, that hasn’t satisfied residents. It was against this backdrop that Hochul announced on Wednesday that she would deploy 1,000 state police officers and the National Guard to the city subways in a new anti-crime crackdown, which will include the reimplementation of “bag checks” for subway riders.

The sudden urgency follows a series of efforts by Hochul to pivot away from the persona she cultivated as an immigration dove. Last summer, the governor chastised Joe Biden for failing to mitigate the effects of the migrant crisis on American cities. “New York has shouldered this burden for far too long,” she declared. “We don’t have capacity,” Hochul told CNN last September in an attempt to dissuade would-be migrants. “If you’re going to leave your country, go somewhere else.” She shortly thereafter backed NYC mayor Eric Adams’s effort to compel courts to roll back the city’s “right to shelter” rule, which requires municipal facilities to provide housing to newly arrived migrants. When asylum-seekers were involved in a coordinated assault on NYPD in Times Square, Hochul adopted rhetoric that could have been confused with Donald Trump’s. “Get them all and send them back,” she growled. “You don’t touch our police officers. You don’t touch anybody.”

The shift in tone and focus from New York’s governor is welcome, but she should expound on the changing circumstances that prompted it. The press might let Hochul get away with this about-face when confronted with the consequences of her own advocacy, but New York’s voters should not.