The company, Roadrunners Charters, agreed to immediately cease the transportation of migrants into New York until the city’s lawsuit is resolved.
One of the 17 charter bus companies that New York City sued for bussing undocumented immigrants into the Big Apple has agreed to cease its allegedly unlawful transportation practices.
According to CBS News, the tentative agreement was announced earlier this week by New York City’s beleaguered mayor, Eric Adams. In a statement, a spokesperson for Adams said that the defendant company—Roadrunners Charters, Inc.—said that it will stop bringing undocumented immigrants into New York and surrounding areas until the city’s claims have been resolved.
“New York City continues to do our part as we lead the nation in managing this national humanitarian crisis, but reckless political games from the state of Texas will not be tolerated,” the mayor’s office said in a press release. “I am pleased to see that Roadrunners—one of the bus companies we sued for taking part in Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s scheme to transport tens of thousands of migrants to our city in an attempt to overwhelm our shelter system and shift costs to New York City—has agreed to halt the bussing of migrants into and around New York City while the lawsuit proceeds.”
“We call on all other bus companies involved in this suit to do the same,” the mayor’s office added.
As LegalReader.com has reported before, the lawsuit names 17 bus companies—all allegedly involved in the unlawful transportation of undocumented immigrants into the city—as defendants. New York is seeking an estimated total of $708 million in compensation, saying that the defendant companies violated state law and recently-implemented city ordinances.
Section 149 of the New York Social Services Law, for instance, states that “[any] person who knowingly brings, or causes to be brought a needy person from out of state into [New York] for the purpose of making him a public charge […] shall be obligated to convey such a person out of state or support him at his own expense.”
Similarly, New York City Emergency Executive Order 538 establishes notice, time, and place requirements for charter bus operators who know “or reasonably should know that [their charter bus] will be transporting ten or more passengers who are likely to seek emergency shelter and other immediate services in New York City.”
Attorneys for the say have explicitly accused the defendant companies of acting with the “evil intention of shifting the costs of [undocumented immigrants’] care to New York.”
“As a testament to the ‘bad faith’ and ‘evil intent’ of the Defendants, they are receiving more for their services than it would cost to buy a one-way ticket from Texas to New York on a regularly-scheduled bus,” the lawsuit alleges. “According to public reporting based on data obtained under the Texas Public Information Act, the Defendants receive roughly $1,650 per person on chartered buses compared to $291 for a single one-way ticket.”
Ingrid Lewis Martin, chief legal advisor to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, has since said that the city is being forced to take on an extraordinary burden without appropriate assistance.
“The money that we expend on migrants, immigrants, we should not be expending,” Lewis Martin said. “It should come from the federal government. So if the federal government would kick in and do their part, do its part, then we would be in a much better place, you know, so we need help.”
Sources
1 of 17 bus companies sued by NYC agrees to temporarily stop transporting migrants, Mayor Adams says
New York City sues bus companies that Texas hired to transport migrants
Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York: N.Y.C. v. Buckeye Coach et al
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