by WorldTribune Staff, October 27, 2023
New York taxpayers are literally being taken to the cleaners.
The city is paying millions of dollars to clean the laundry of migrants who have been bused in from the southern border.
“This gives new meaning to money laundering,” the New York Post’s Carl Campanile noted in an Oct. 26 report.
The laundry bill includes a $1.1 million emergency cleaning contract awarded to Queens-based CRC Management Co. for people in shelters it runs, according to city records.
Four other Department of Homeless contracts totaling $23 million are for laundry services as well as staffing and security.
“The total figure spent by the city on migrant laundry was not known, Campinle reported, adding that “it’s at least in the eight-figure range, as earlier this year a $10.5 million cleaning contract was awarded by the Health+ Hospital agency to Sodexo Laundry Service.”
Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella said: “Here we are providing laundry services to people who arrived here last week? That’s a lot of dough to spend on laundry. We should be spending that money elsewhere. It’s one more reason the migrant crisis has to come to an end.”
New York City has paid out $2.26 billion since the influx of migrants arrived in the spring of 2022. Than includes $1 billion to cover the cost of services and supplies — including laundry, registration, transportation and security costs.
“The state and city are treating us like chumps,” Queens Councilman Robert Holden said. “We have to do our laundry. Migrants should have to go to the laundromat like the rest of us. They should do their own laundry.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats who in the past have lauded the city’s and state’s status as sanctuaries for migrants, have lately taken to criticizing Team Biden’s management of record-breaking illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border — and have pleaded for cash to offset what Adams has said could be a $12 billion tab for New York City.
Joe Biden snubbed Hochul in August when she visited the White House to discuss the impact of the Biden team’s open border.