Rhode Island’s Search for New Yorkers Starts in Beach Towns

(Bloomberg) --

Rhode Island authorities on Saturday began searching for New Yorkers defying mandated self-quarantine as the state’s governor said the epidemic’s danger outweighed the appearance of persecution.

The state’s National Guard said it was working with the police and health agencies to go door-to-door in coastal communities to identify New York residents and collect information on them. Those who defy the self-quarantine order face fines or jail, said Governor Gina Raimondo.

Troops were vetting mass-transit passengers and turning their particulars over to Rhode Island’s health agency for analysis and follow-up visits, said Captain Mark Incze, a National Guard spokesman. He said in a statement that the information wouldn’t be shared with any other agencies and is vital to tracking potential coronavirus exposures.

The troops appeared to be working mostly in small and unassuming groups and often with local police across several of the state’s coastal communities.

But Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York said he strongly opposed Rhode Island’s actions as “reactionary” and an “absurdity.”

“If they don’t roll back that policy I’m going to sue them,” he said on CNN Saturday. “Because that’s clearly unconstitutional.”

At the Kingston train station, a Bloomberg reporter saw a handful of Guardsmen, clad in camouflaged fatigues with no firearms visible, ready to question exiting passengers. Their checkpoint consisted of two folding tables and two chairs. They said they had only had one person arrive on a New York train.

A family who had come from upstate New York to their second home in Charlestown said they were visited early Saturday by two Guardsmen and two local police. They gave their names and emails to the officers and, in return, were handed brochures.

“They were very nice,” said the father of the group, who would not give his name.

In Westerly, known for its destination beaches and Watch Hill Lighthouse, two Humvees crept along the streets, while the largest law enforcement presence were the state troopers at the Interstate 95 checkpoint that went into effect Friday so vehicle passengers with New York license plates could be told of the mandatory quarantine.

Wave of Attempts

Raimondo’s Friday order was part of a wave of attempts to stop state-to-state movement to arrest the spread of the pandemic by quarantining travelers from hotbeds of disease. Florida also tried to stop New Yorkers at the airports and Louisianans on the highway. And President Donald Trump on Saturday floated the idea of mandatory quarantines in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, though it was unclear how that might be enforced.

Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, said Saturday that states aren’t required to ignore contagious diseases, but neither can they ignore America’s founding principles. Raimondo’s order “raises red flags,” he said in an email.

The order doesn’t cover people arriving from hot spots besides New York, he said.

“We need to be on the alert for discrimination against outsiders, including not just foreigners but Americans from other states, that isn’t strictly and objectively warranted by the facts,” he said. “As the Supreme Court put it in one famous case, our Constitution was founded on the philosophy that we must sink or swim together.”

Viral Epicenter

But at a news conference, Raimondo said New York’s status as a viral epicenter constitutes a proximate risk less than 200 miles away. Rhode Island has 239 coronavirus cases, with 29 patients requiring hospitalization.

“More than half the cases of coronavirus in America are in New York, and it is getting worse not better,” she said.

In southern Rhode Island on Saturday, shopping plazas were full and beach areas were doing a brisk business with strollers and dog walkers. Many vacation homes were open and occupied in the Breachway area of Charlestown. Cars sported license plates from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Raimondo said that police were stopping cars with New York license plates, and that the National Guard and local police began searching summer homes.

“When you ask me if I’m worried about the optics of the National Guard knocking on doors today in Westerly and Newport to figure out who’s from New York and taking down their number and enforcing a quarantine, I don’t like those optics,” she said.

“I’m more worried about the outcome of our hospitals being overrun, running out of beds, running out of ventilators, running out of PPE before we’re ready for a surge,” she said. “I have no good options in front of me.”

Raimondo, a two-term Democrat, is the state’s first female governor and a former venture capitalist with degrees from Harvard, Yale and Oxford. Her rise in state politics was born of controversy. As state treasurer in 2011, she led efforts to cut pensions for public employees to stave off state bankruptcy.

At Kingston, Rhode Island, an Amtrak crew member stood in the cab door of his Siemens ACS-64 locomotive to take in the scene. The train left Boston an hour earlier and would make its way to Washington via New York.

A woman on the platform looking at the train said, “Who would want to go to New York now?”

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