Former Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, is taking top House Republican Elise Stefanik to task for spreading a story about migrants that was recently shown to be a hoax.
Stefanik, the representative for New York’s 21st Congressional District and third highest-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, shared a New York Post story to Twitter last Saturday, which claimed that 20 homeless veterans had been made to leave a hotel in Orange County, just north of New York City, to make room for migrants. The newspaper claimed that the migrants were being bused to Orange County by the city’s mayor, Eric Adams.
New York City has already spent $1 billion to house tens of thousands of asylum seekers and anticipates that figure could climb to $4.3 billion through June 2024 to “manage” the influx of migrants in the nation’s most populous city, the city’s Deputy Mayor for Health & Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said earlier this week.
In addition, New York City has been dealing with a spike in homelessness before the surge in migrant arrivals, leaving its shelters packed and overwhelmed. More than 60,000 migrants have arrived in New York in the past year, with 4,200 since Title 42 expired on May 11, according to City Hall officials.
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“Biden’s America. Kathy Hochul’s New York. Eric Adams’s New York City,” Stefanik tweeted last week in response the Post‘s story. “A disgrace.”
On Thursday, however, the story was shown to have been a hoax in a report from the Times Union, a local newspaper covering upstate New York. In a further report from Mid Hudson News, it was found that the nonprofit group that made the initial claims, the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation, had allegedly recruited 20 homeless individuals to pose as veterans for the story. Sharon Toney-Finch, CEO of the nonprofit, denied the allegations after the report was published, but has not provided definitive evidence for her claims.
In the wake of the story falling apart, Kinzinger, who represented Illinois districts from 2011 to this year, called out Stefanik on Saturday morning for her original tweets about the story.
“Hey [Elise Stefanik] this is a lie,” he tweeted in response to a post from Stefanik’s personal account. “You spread this one, among many.”
“Hey [Elise Stefanik] this story is a complete and total lie,” he added in response to another tweet from the congresswoman’s personal account. “You should apologize.”
“Wow even spread this lie on her official Twitter,” Kinzinger wrote in another tweet, this time in response to a post from Stefanik’s official congressional Twitter account.
As of Saturday afternoon, Stefanik has not issued a statement on the allegations surrounding the migrant story. Newsweek reached out to the congresswoman’s press office via email for comment.
The office of the New York state attorney general has since confirmed that it is looking into the situation. This came after urging from state Assemblyman Brian Maher, a Republican who has advocated for veterans, after he discovered the claims about the story and denounced it as false.
Maher had previously discussed the initial claims from the Post story during an appearance on Fox News, calling the allegations “an embarrassment” and “a slap in the face.”
“This is something I believe hurt a lot of people,” Maher said in a statement to the Times Union.
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