With no updates from Gov. Kathy Hochul and facing a lawsuit by the New York mayor, the leader of the Suffolk Legislature is girding for an upcoming battle over the relocation of the 74,000 migrants overwhelming the city’s emergency housing system. In a wide-ranging interview with the South Shore Press, Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey discussed the immigration crisis and another issue that is riveting attention on county government: the investigation into the cyberattack that shut down Suffolk’s computer network for months.
Following a raucous hearing June 1, the legislature approved McCaffrey’s resolution to hire a special counsel to provide Suffolk lawmakers with options on how to handle attempts to relocate migrants to the county. The measure came as county Executive Steve Bellone announced the creation of a taskforce to review any placement efforts. His plan was immediately followed by a lawsuit filed by Mayor Eric Adams aiming to “put an end to this xenophobic bigotry and ensure our state acts as one as we work together to manage this humanitarian crisis fairly and humanely, as we have done from the beginning and as we will continue to do.”
According to McCaffrey, more than 2,000 migrants are coming into New York each week with at least half of the hotels in the city being used to house them. “They’ve allowed themselves to be overwhelmed by declaring New York a Sanctuary City. Suffolk County is not. They’re not able to handle it,” he said, noting that city officials are under a dubious legal mandate ordering them to provide housing to anyone in need. “While the city is willing to pay room and board for the migrants, there’s not enough money for the services they would require, including schooling, health care, and emergency response.” These costs, McCaffrey stressed, would be borne by local taxpayers. “We just won’t be able to afford an influx of this magnitude.”
The Presiding Officer surmised that many recent arrivals have already settled in Suffolk and are “living off the grid” with friends or family members as part of an underground economy made necessary by their legal status. The judicial process as it currently stands to handle asylum claims, the chief reason the migrants are using to enter the country, will take years to handle the load, he noted. “In the meantime, they are not paying taxes and are looking to be supported by those who are,” McCaffrey said.
“We can’t afford the problems created by the Biden Administration’s open-door policies,” McCaffrey stressed, which is the position of his majority GOP caucus. “Bringing five million people into our country is just not sustainable. They’ve given up operational control of the border and are relying on Third World countries to conduct background checks on the people that are coming here. We are not anti-immigrant; my parents were not born here. They came in through a process, but right now there is no process, the system has been short circuited. This is unfair to those who are legally,” McCaffrey went on. “The administration is sending the wrong message, someone has to put their foot down,” McCaffrey said, adding that the legislature is narrowing down its choice for a special counsel and will make an announcement soon. “Thankfully, there are no busloads coming to Suffolk at present, our finger is in the dike right now.”
McCaffrey concluded his remarks on the immigration topic with: “The open-door policy is driven by the Progressive side of the Democrat party. Next, they will argue for amnesty, citizen status. They are doing this under the belief that the immigrants who are relying on government services will be more sympathetic to the Democrats when it comes to elections.”
Since announcing his special immigration committee, county Executive Bellone has been mum on the issue. His office has not said if the county will challenge rulings on the ability of counties to fight the migrant relocation efforts and consistently fails to respond to requests for comment by the South Shore Press.
McCaffrey is also part of the special committee he created to get to the bottom of the cyberattack that crippled county operations for months and exposed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of county workers and residents. “The more people we speak to, the more we realize just how vulnerable the county system was,” McCaffrey said, calling the problem an administrative one, rather than just a security issue. “We made recommendations to hire a security chief three years ago and it just sat on the shelf. A security officer would have taken control immediately,” he said, noting that the county’s firewalls were reaching the end of their useful lifespans. “There was no urgency to replace them.”
McCaffrey waded into the complexities of the county’s various security systems and vendors at a hearing Friday featuring Peter Schlussler, the IT chief for the county clerk’s office, which was fingered by Bellone as being the entry point for the cyberhackers. He discussed the viability of an overall system protecting all county departments while integrating the security operations of offices such as the county clerk. Aside from investigating the source of the attack, McCaffrey said the committee is conducting background work to develop plans and procedures to make sure the county is protected. “The whole thing is very concerning to me.”
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| Kevin J. McCaffrey File Photo |
The Presiding Officer also commented on the state legislation that cleared the way for Suffolk to hold a public vote on creating a countywide sewer district and increasing the sales tax an eighth of a cent for wastewater treatment efforts. He said the plan focuses too much on upgrading individual cesspools, and not enough on building new sewers. “There’s no dedicated revenue stream for sewers,” he said of the state legislation, adding that he is studying the proposals to make sure they achieve the goals of the county’s Subwatersheds Wastewater Plan. Representing an area that includes the Southwest Sewer District, a project that set sewering back decades because of its corruption, McCaffrey said he is looking for more details on how a countywide district would affect existing users. The legislature is holding public hearings on the issue and McCaffrey said he wants to hear from all of the stakeholders before deciding on scheduling the referendum.