You can’t hide NYC’s migrant crisis by chasing off journalists, NYPD
Why on earth did the NYPD cop-block a Post reporter from interviewing the migrants camped this week outside Midtown’s Roosevelt Hotel?
Yes, the public campout was a huge embarrassment for the Adams administration.
But that doesn’t qualify as “exigent circumstances”, the BS excuse the cops gave to stop reporters from speaking to the migrants themselves.
“You don’t have to be here, you want to be here,” bluffed one officer.
Wrong: We do have to be there!
A massive throng of illegal migrants gathered in the commercial nerve center of America’s largest city as they await processing by a slapdash, jerry-rigged system that can in no way accommodate them is the definition of newsworthy.
That Gotham’s crisis is a direct result of federal policy only makes it more so.
Cracking down on our reporters’ First Amendment rights in response is beyond unacceptable.
Don’t forget the move also deprives the migrants of their own right to speak, and the right of New Yorkers (and everyone else) to hear what they themselves have to say.
Where did they come from? How did they get here? Are they being treated well or badly? Why New York? Do they have plans for a long-term life here?
Those are all essential questions, even if their answers make the powers-that-be uncomfortable.
What were the cops (or whoever told them to do this) hoping to achieve, anyway?
That they could somehow make this obvious mess go away if no pushy journalists got to stick their noses in?
The fact that no one from the department brass has owned up to this proves that the cops recognize it was a blunder.
The Adams administration played dumb as well, with Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom saying: “That seems strange, I’ll follow up.”
And that’s even as a private contractor the city hired to deal with the migrants crisis, DocGo, has allegedly been pulling similar shenanigans with New York Times reporters, blocking them from speaking to migrants in an Albany hotel.
Policy solutions to our migrant crisis do exist. But banana-republic tactics against the press simply aren’t among them.
