New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday sued 17 charter bus companies who’ve been ferrying migrants to New York at the behest of Texas Governor Greg Abbott over the past year, aiming to recuperate the costs of housing them to the tune of $708 million.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in New York State court, attorneys representing the city argued under a little-known provision of the state’s Social Services Law that city officials could seek damages from any party who “knowingly brings, or causes to be brought a needy person from out of state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge.”
The bus companies are breaking that law, City Hall argues, because “stripped to its essentials, the Texas governor’s-publicly articulated plan — which the defendants have knowingly implemented — is to shift to New York City and other urban areas the traditional cost of migration at the southern border.”
Adams announced the lawsuit in a video message released Thursday afternoon.
“These companies have violated state law by not paying the cost of caring for these migrants,” he said.
Abbott was not named in the city’s lawsuit, but his office swiftly released a statement slamming Adams’ lawsuit as “baseless,” invoking the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which protects interstate movement and commerce.
“Every migrant bused or flown to New York City did so voluntarily, after having been authorized by the Biden administration to remain in the United States. As such, they have constitutional authority to travel across the country that Mayor Adams is interfering with. If the Mayor persists in this lawsuit, he may be held legally accountable for his violations.”
Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Adams, said City Hall is confident in the city’s legal theory as laid out in the lawsuit.
A source familiar with the city’s legal strategy said that while aiming to block buses from arriving in New York City would likely violate the U.S. Commerce Clause, the suit doesn’t do that but rather attempts to recuperate costs the city has incurred after migrants arrive.
Immigrants’ rights groups slammed Adams’ lawsuit. Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, called the lawsuit another one of Adams’ “grab bag of ineffective approaches.”
“For almost two years, Mayor Adams has treated the arrival of asylum seekers as an emergency, trying everything he can to dissuade asylum seekers from coming to New York rather than developing an efficient and thoughtful process to welcome them,” Awawdeh said. “The Mayor needs to stop complaining that the city is at a breaking point and scapegoating immigrants. He should instead be implementing solutions like expanding and streamlining immigration legal services.”
Several bus companies named in the city’s lawsuit couldn’t be reached for comment immediately or didn’t return requests for comment right away. Representatives reached at two companies — Garcia and Garcia Enterprises and VLP Charter LLC — hung up when asked by a reporter to comment. A representative of Mayo Tours Inc., a charter bus company based in West Monroe, Louisiana, declined to comment.
The legal move is the latest attempt by the Adams administration to slow the flow of migrants arriving in the five boroughs. Last week, Adams announced executive orders and fines for bus companies who dropped off migrants in the city outside designated hours of 8:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, and required companies to communicate with city officials in advance about the number of people arriving.
Many companies quickly found ways to evade the order, with buses instead dropping hundreds of migrants in various cities in New Jersey, who are then shepherded to New York City via public transportation — with the bus companies paying their New Jersey Transit fare into the city, according to the suit.
‘Bad Faith’
It’s unclear if the city’s suit will stand up in court. Like Abbott, David Lurie, an attorney who specializes in regulatory enforcement matters, said there are two potential constitutional violations the lawsuit poses, though it remains to be seen how a judge will weigh in.
“One is the violation of the right of the bus companies to engage in interstate commerce,” he said. “And the second is, it may be a violation of the migrants’ constitutionally protected rights to travel within the United States.”
The suit argues that “the Texas governor’s plan is not part of a human-centered initiative to help individuals vindicate a constitutional right to travel within the United States.”
Attorneys for the city argue bus companies have acted in “bad faith” or with “evil intention,” as the state law requires, citing reporting in Axios that Texas pays bus companies on average $1,650 per migrant per bus trip, though average one-way tickets typically cost less than $300.
Abbott has said his office has paid to bus 33,600 migrants to New York City over the past year and a half, about 20%of the roughly 150,000 migrants who have traveled to New York City from the southern border and other cities around the country over the past year and a half. The $708 million in damages sought by the city is based on a calculation for the 33,600 migrants specifically sent by Texas on buses. That would put the damages the city is seeking at just over $20,000 per person.
All told city officials said they spent $3.5 billion on shelter services for arriving migrants, more than 66,000 of whom were still in city shelters, according to tallies through the end of November.
Alongside the city’s corporation council, the city’s former social services commissioner Steve Banks, who now works at the private law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison, is also representing the Adams administration.
In a separate lawsuit, Banks — who sued the city as an attorney at Legal Aid to create and then expand the city’s unique right to shelter before joining the de Blasio administration — is now defending that right against City Hall’s effort to gut the provision.