Unaccompanied migrant children arrived on flights to a rural New York community and local officials said Friday they were given no advance notice by the Biden administration.
Montgomery police chief Paul Arteta and Mayor Steve Brescia joined “Fox & Friends First” to explain what happened when the flights arrived at Orange County Airport from Texas, carrying minors between 13-18 years old.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Brescia, whose town is located in the Hudson Valley, about 75 miles north of New York City.
Arteta said officials don’t know where the parents are, but the children continued on to other areas of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Brescia said he wished he had received some alert before the flights arrived.
“They thought that the village or town knew about it, and we knew nothing. And there wasn’t much we could do about it, unfortunately. But just a little forewarning or little information would have helped us considerably,” he told Carley Shimkus.
Brescia said the leaders in his community were worried about the safety of the children and did not have answers to provide to residents. He said the town would have had to handle the response if, “God forbid,” the bus that picked up the migrants at the airport had been involved in an accident.
Arteta said after “dozens of phone calls” to local officials, they were able to verify that the flight had been sanctioned by the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
Arteta said officers had been alerted by a resident who had called to report “suspicious” activity.
“It astounds me,” Brescia told Brian Kilmeade on “Fox & Friends” on Friday.
“We’re being dumped on and, we’re not going to put up with it. We hope there’s no more flights coming into the airport, because we can’t handle it. There’s not enough security there. There’s not enough resources in our community. The taxpayers cannot absorb what they did to us,” he said.
Meantime, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is tapping the National Guard to help with New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ migrant tent city, Fox News Digital has confirmed.
The development comes after Adams announced Monday night that the city was relocating its first humanitarian emergency response and relief center for asylum seekers from Orchard Beach, which was condemned for being flood prone and far from public transportation to Randall’s Island.
In the past several months, New York City has seen an influx of more than 16,000 asylum seekers, Adams’ office said Monday. But according to figures from Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office Friday, the southern border state has bused just over 2,900 migrants to New York City since Aug. 5.
Reporting from Fox News.
