Do I stay or do I go now?
Rockland County officials have ordered the local hotel at the center of the Big Apple migrant saga to turn away all guests because of an expired permit — a move that sparked confusion among employees who insist they’ve been kept in the dark and are still operating as normal.
County Executive Ed Day said Wednesday that the Armoni Inn and Suites in Orangeburg was no longer able to accept any guests after the owners failed to re-apply for a “temporary residence permit” — which allows it to operate as a hotel — before it expired on April 30.
“They cannot operate as a hotel under any circumstances,” Day insisted during a press conference.
The expired permit was only discovered as county officials scrambled to find legal avenues to try and thwart Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to dump busloads of migrants at hotels in both Rockland and Orange counties starting from Wednesday, the top pol said.
The move comes after Armoni Inn was already temporarily banned from housing any migrants after a state judge on Tuesday granted Orangetown officials’ request for a temporary restraining order that stops the hotel from turning its premises into a shelter for non-transient guests.
The exec, who earlier declared a state of emergency, on Wednesday ripped into Mayor Adams over his continued push to relocate asylum seekers to Rockland and Orange counties — despite the “legal blockades in front of him.”
“I’ve never seen such arrogance and such bullishness in my entire career,” he said.
“If the mayor’s people are willing to send people to a hotel that’s not willing to operate and put people in legal jeopardy, I don’t know what to say.”
Day added: “Instead of speaking to us, instead of providing a plan of action to us, instead of coming to us a month or two ago so we could try to figure out what the issue is, they just said basically ‘Rockland be damned, we’re going to do what we want to do.'”
The hotel’s owners were served the expired permit notice late Tuesday, Day said — though it wasn’t immediately when county officials would enforce the closure.
Despite the order, the hotel’s front desk was still manned as usual on Wednesday afternoon.
“We have people checking in, people staying over. The system still works. People are still making reservations online,” a staffer told The Post.
In light of New York City’s plans to house asylum seekers there, Day said the county’s health department would now have to inspect the premise to determine if it’s going to be used as a hotel or shelter before a new permit is issued.
Separately, Rockland County filed its own lawsuit late Tuesday seeking its own temporary restraining order to further prevent Adams’ planned busloads of asylum seekers from being dumped in the region.
In the wake of Orangetown’s order being granted, a City Hall spokesman said the Big Apple would let the legal process play out regarding the Armoni Inn.
The city, however, planned to move ahead with shipping asylum seekers to a hotel in nearby Orange County on Wednesday.