Republican New York Rep. Anthony D’Esposito slammed Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman after Goldman told witnesses they shouldn’t be speaking about the migrant crisis because they’re not experts.
During a Homeland Security Committee hearing entitled “Protecting our Preparedness: Assessing the Impact of the Border Crisis on Emergency Management,” Goldman told a group of witnesses that they were not experts and were only called to testify because of an alleged friendship with D’Esposito.
“I would expect that this would be a really powerful hearing for the New York City Council but not clear why it’s one in the Congress of the United States, which seems to be fixated on New York,” Goldman began, “another bill we had last week was totally focused only as a messaging bill only on New York. I appreciate that our witnesses are buddy’s of the chairman but respectfully, none of you, other than Mr. Awawdeh, have any expertise about immigration policy and I’ve been listening to what you’ve had to say and I just wanna go through a couple of things.”
Goldman then sparred with one witness, Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman, over whether migrants are vetted before arriving to New York City and their impact on local crime.
D’Esposito called Goldman out for his comments on the witnesses’ credibility.
“Well, thank you Mr. Goldman, I just want to take the opportunity to remind everybody that we are at the Committee on Homeland Security subcommittee on emergency management and technology and the title of this hearing is ‘Protecting our Preparedness’: Assessing the Impact of the Border Crisis on Emergency Management.’ This is not an immigration hearing, nor are we focusing on immigration, we’re focused on failed policies of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Joe Biden and I would like to thank the three republican witnesses who I believe are experts on emergency management and handling this crisis.”
New York City has experienced a surge in illegal migrants over the last several months after Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began busing migrants out of the state. Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the city would slash its budgets, closing libraries and freezing police hiring, in order to handle the rising costs of the migrant crisis.