Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis is pressing New York City Mayor Eric Adams to allow Staten Island to secede, as it seeks to escape having migrant camps and shelters established on its territory by the Democrat.
Adams, who previously styled NYC as a “sanctuary city”, is now struggling to deal with an influx of well over 100,000 migrants, and is demanding conservative-led border states to stop helping migrants to travel to his jurisdiction. He has also asked President Joe Biden to redistribute his migrants to areas locations under federal control elsewhere in the U.S., but is establishing tent cities and other makeshift accommodation sites to host them in NYC in the meantime.
Staten Islanders, who tend to vote Republican, are unhappy at having such sites forced on them, however, with Malliotakis declaring: “If you’re not going to do your job, Mayor, then let Staten Island secede.”
Elaborating on her proposal during a television appearance, she said she believes Staten Island, which is home to a larger population than U.S. cities such as Miami, “would like to have an opportunity to self-govern.”
She accepts that the “reality is the city council and the state legislature would need to let Staten Island go,” however.