Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon has kept the county in a state of emergency for about three years to prevent downstate municipalities from moving migrants to Onondaga County. Credit: Anais Mejia | Central Current

Onondaga County has been in a state of emergency since 2023 — but few of its residents know it. 

Beginning in May 2023, County Executive Ryan McMahon has renewed a proclamation of emergency and two local emergency orders more than 300 times combined. The two orders effectively bar outside municipalities from moving migrants to Onondaga County and funding their housing or creating shelters for them. 

The orders mimicked others across New York, when New York City mayor Eric Adams was considering busing migrants to upstate communities. 

Onondaga County Attorney Bob Durr said the orders are still necessary. In a letter to Central Current, Durr argued immigration is “still a problem” and that at any point immigrants could be shipped to Central New York. 

“If we don’t have an order in place,” Durr wrote, “we will not be able to prevent that from happening.”

But activists and experts challenge the legality and ethics of that argument. Nicole Watts, chair of the legislature, said that the decision to maintain the ban should have gone through the legislative process, and that she was concerned by the language around migrants in the orders. Jim McKeever, a local advocate with Syracuse Immigrant and Refugee Defense Network, said that he wondered how much time and labor the county had spent renewing the orders, and called it a “cheap, easy, and inhumane way of dealing with a humanitarian crisis.” 

Amy Belsher, a lawyer at the NYCLU, called Onondaga County’s continued renewal of these executive orders both “shocking” and “unconstitutional.” 

“You don’t get to just induce the executive order process to create laws that don’t exist,” said Belsher. “There’s no emergency.” 

The fight goes back to 2023, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott was in the midst of busing thousands of migrants to other cities, including New York. 

In May 2023, after a year of Abbott’s buses, then-New York Mayor Eric Adams tried to bus some migrants to cities in Upstate New York. The move inspired dozens of emergency orders across the state which effectively barred Adams from moving the migrants. 

After learning that a bus might come to the Town of Salina, and that Adams’ administration had contracted with a local hotel to shelter migrants in Onondaga County, then-Supervisor Nick Paro filed a temporary restraining order. 

County Executive Ryan McMahon proclaimed a state of emergency and issued an executive order barring hotels from contracting with outside municipalities to shelter migrants. He renewed it until August 2023.

The original order allowed the sheriff to make limited stops of people who may have violated the executive order by moving migrants or asylum seekers into the county. In May 2023, the Sheriff Toby Shelley said that direction was “on the edge of violating someone’s constitutional rights.”

Beginning in mid-August of that year, McMahon issued a new executive order. It contained many of the same restrictions, but did not direct the sheriff to make limited stops. That order has been renewed ever since. 

A later emergency order barred local hotels and motels from accepting New York City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement vouchers to pay for the shelter. 

At the time, local and statewide activists rallied against the orders. 

Under state law, local emergency orders issued by a county executive are only applicable for five days at a time but can be renewed for additional five-day periods. McMahon has regularly renewed emergency orders during two periods: In 2020 and 2021, he renewed nearly two dozen emergency orders related to face coverings, COVID-testing, and indoor activities. He has also regularly renewed the migrant shelter emergency orders since 2023. 

Durr did not respond to questions from Central Current about why the county did not pursue legislation instead of renewing the orders. 

Belsher, the NYCLU lawyer, argued McMahon’s emergency proclamations were illegal for a multitude of reasons. It violated the 14th amendment rights of migrants, she said. Article 17 of the New York State constitution prevents counties from discriminating on the basis of poverty. McMahon overstepped his authority, laid out by state law, in determining migrants arriving in the county imperiled public safety, she said. 

“The idea that some poor people might come into your community is not a catastrophe,” Belsher said. She added that even if there had been an emergency in 2023, there “certainly” is not now. 

In 2023, Belsher was part of a team of NYCLU attorneys who challenged similar executive orders in Orange and Rockland counties.

Ultimately, Judge Nelson S. Román ruled against the two downstate counties. There is a well-established fundamental right to travel within a state, Román wrote. While Rockland and Orange counties claimed migrants were not barred from traveling to or residing in their counties outside of the New York City programs, Román ruled that the counties had likely violated that right. 

The counties argued that a “flood” of migrants could spike the number of people who needed services. 

“While conservation of resources may serve as a legitimate reason for the EO, it may not be pursued with the goal that the community ‘take care of its own first,’” wrote Román.

While the circumstances of the Rockland and Orange lawsuit were “somewhat analogous,” they were not the same as in Onondaga County, wrote Durr. He said the law and finding were “not germane” to Onondaga County. 

“Concerning the issue of interstate travel, we are not restricting their travel rates, but we are restricting the mass migration to the County and an organized basis from an outside governmental entity,” wrote Durr. “There is no travel restriction that is applicable here.”

He also wrote that circumstances had not changed since the initial passing of the orders, and that the change in administration “does not necessarily bind New York City and their actions.” 

Tim Burtis, a Republican county legislator, said that while he remembered his caucus talking about the busing, he did not remember a conversation within the caucus about taking action. Nobody within the legislature at the time proposed a resolution or took steps to make McMahon’s executive orders into legislation. 

Burtis, who was chair of the legislature for two years of the continued renewals, said it was news to him that the orders were still being renewed but renewing the orders was legal. 

The Democratic caucus is “deeply concerned” by the emergency orders, said Majority Leader Nodesia Hernandez. Hernandez said she was speaking to outside legal counsel, and Chair Nicole Watts said she shared her concerns with McMahon. 

After their conversation, the county executive decided to revise the language, spokespeople for both McMahon and the legislature said. He would be removing targeted language around migrants, said Watts. As of the clerk’s office closing on Thursday, the new order had not been filed and Central Current had not seen it. 

“County government and its leaders did exactly what they are supposed to,” said Justin Sayles, a spokesperson for the county executive, in a text to Central Current. “Express concerns and come to an acceptable compromise.”

Once the county decided to deal with the migrants through executive orders, it became “normal,” Burtis said. Once that solution was decided on, the county was not going to change it, he said. 

“The county executive has great power,” said Burtis.

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Laura Robertson is a staff reporter covering Onondaga County. Prior to joining Central Current, she lived on the edge of the Bering Strait in Nome, Alaska, where she worked as a reporter for a year. She...