American couple's wedding destroyed as NY hotel cancels rooms they booked to accommodate migrants
NEWBURGH, NEW YORK: A Florida couple's wedding plans are in crisis after a hotel in Upstate New York canceled the rooms they had booked for their guests out of the blue in order to make space for migrants. Gary Moretti, 37, and Deanna Mifsud, 35, blasted The Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh after it abruptly canceled 30 rooms reserved for them just weeks before their nuptials.
Moretti is reportedly from New York but moved to Florida a number of years ago. The groom chose Crossroads as it was just 20 minutes from the luxurious Lippincott Manor in Wallkill, which is the venue for their June 24 wedding. He is now left desperately looking for new accommodations for guests, including the bridesmaids and groomsmen, after the hotel prioritized migrants over them.
READ MORE
'Absolutely upsetting'
"It was absolutely devastating," Moretti told the Daily Mail. "It really just hit us hard, despite having contracts and thinking we were locked in - it's disrespectful." The move comes shortly after the end of Title 42 sparked a wave of migrants crossing the southern border and could cost the couple upwards of $20,000 as they scramble to arrange new accommodations and transport for about 160 guests. "It's absolutely upsetting how they're treating American people. How do tax-paying people have to deal with this?" Moretti asked.
'None of the guests were notified'
The groom said he only found out about the cancellations after reading on the news that hotels in upstate New York were accommodating droves of migrants coming from the border. "I had to find out myself," Moretti told the Daily Mail. "I called the management company because I was concerned about my bookings, and they just told me. 'You don't have to be concerned, because it's all canceled.' They were so disrespectful, they just played it off like it was nothing." The embattled husband-to-be noted how it was left up to him to break the news to his guests, some of whom were reportedly preparing to travel all the way from the West Coast. "None of the guests were notified," he said. "If we hadn't sought it out, they might never have told us."
Moretti, who is a firefighter by profession, ridiculed New York's handling of the migrant crisis and noted that he barely recognizes his home state. "The way they approached it - including the homeless veterans - it just blows my mind," he explained. "Everything I knew of New York is destroyed. I'm concerned about the way this country is going. It's not the migrant's fault, but this state doesn't want to do anything." That said, Moretti and Mifsud are not the only couple affected by cancellations at the Crossroads Hotel, which was also set to be used in the wedding of Queens couple Sean Plunkett and Nicole Hoeffrle. Their predicament has left them feeling "very cast aside," Plunkett told CBS News.
It's worth noting that the major uptick in border crossings came after the expiration of the Trump-era immigration policy Title 42, which allowed US officials to use a public health law to rapidly expel migrants crossing over the border and deny them the right to seek asylum. Border authorities used the order to turn away more than 2.8 million migrants but it expired at midnight Eastern time on Thursday, May 11. This immediately sparked a record number of border crossings, topping 10,000 a day several times in the last week. Customs and Border Protection officials are overwhelmed with the swarm of arrivals and are reportedly struggling to keep a grasp on the rush to process their entry, per the Daily Mail.