NYC NOW - October 8, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he did not direct his former aide or anyone to break the law. Plus, a former FDNY chief accused of expediting fire safety reviews and inspections in exchange for nearly $100,000 in bribes pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge. Also, WNYC’s MIchael Hill and Arun Venugopal discuss a move by the Biden administration that could doom a migrant program that’s aided untold numbers in New York. And finally, WNYC’s Ryan Kailath follows actor Ken Leung to discuss his star turn.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jinnay P.A. New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he did not direct anyone to break the law. That was the mayor's response to the arrest of his former aide Tuesday morning. Mohamed Bahi, who served as the mayor's senior liaison to the Muslim community, is accused of witness tampering and destroying evidence related to an investigation into the mayor's campaign fundraising practices.

federal prosecutors claim Baha instructed a construction company executive to lie to investigators about his donations and that the mayor was expecting as much. Adam says he would never do that. I will never instruct anyone to do anything illegal or improper. There's only instruction I hear people all the time. Follow the law. Baha could not be reached for comment. A former FD&Y chief accused of expediting fire safety reviews and inspections in exchange for nearly $100,000 in bribes pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge.

WNYC's Samantha Max was in court Tuesday morning and has this report. Prosecutors say Brian Cordasco and another former FDNY chief took illegal payments to speed up fire safety reviews and inspections when they were in charge of the unit that oversees them. Cordasco admitted to the scheme in a brief statement in court. He sat up straight throughout most of the 30-minute hearing, only hunching forward occasionally to say, yes, your honor, or I do your honor, into a microphone. Kordesco faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $300,000. His co-defendant is still pleading not guilty. A recent move by the Biden administration could doom a migrant program that's aided untold numbers in New York.

More on that after the break. Just weeks before the presidential election, the Biden administration says it's ending an immigration parole program that gives people legal protections. The change could impact more than a half million people from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua. For more, my colleague Michael Hill talked with WMYC's Arun Vanekulahal. Arun, there are lots of different immigration programs. Why did the Biden administration launched this one in the first place? Well, the program was launched just a couple years ago in 2022 in order to relieve pressure on the southern border.

This is Stephen Yale-Lair. He's a law professor at Cornell that I spoke to. So the people would be coming legally if they could have a financial sponsor in the United States rather than illegally and take their chances risking that dangerous journey. But it is temporary and it has worked to reduce the number of illegal entries at the border. And that's actually borne out by data from the department. Department of Homeland Security, which says the number of encounters between U.S. Border Patrol agents and people coming from those four countries at various ports of entry, it dropped by 98 percent between the end of 2022 and this July. So a significant drop, Michael.

If it was so successful, Arun, why did it end? The short answer is we don't know. The administration hasn't revealed its hand other than to note in a statement that it was designed to be temporary from the outset. that obviously the timing of this right before the election lends itself to all sorts of speculation. But Stephen Yale-Layer, who we just heard from, said there could be other dimensions to this. For instance, the economy of Venezuela appears to be doing a lot better now. Still, he said there was a lot of controversy surrounding this program, and he says that didn't help a whole lot. Let's talk about the dispute. What happened?

So there were all these allegations of fraud. There was an internal investigation conducted by the department. In one instance, around 600 applications were flagged because they all used the same exact address for a warehouse in Orlando. So the program was temporarily suspended. But all the blowback prompted the House GOP to tweet, shut it down permanently just in August. What does the lapse of this program mean for people who have been protected by it for the last two years? Yeah, there are a lot of people who need to figure that out. It means they're going to need to scramble to find some other form of protection if they want to remain here legally.

For some people, that could mean marriage to an American citizen, which would provide that protection. Dara Lind, who works at the American Immigration Council, told me that are around 173,000 Haitians who are protected by this parole program, could be eligible for TPS or temporary protected status, which is extended to national. who are living here when something really awful happens in their homeland, like an earthquake. One route that some can take is to apply for amnesty, but that has to be done within one year of arriving here in the U.S. So this can have a lot of consequences. Murad Awada is the president of the New York Immigration Coalition, and he said in a statement that without parole extensions, these individuals will face the reality of losing their legal ability to work, unable to support themselves or their families.

That's WMYC's Arun Venigapal, talking with my colleague Michael Hill. After decades on shows like Lost and The Sopranos, New Yorker Ken Leong is having a breakout moment on HBO's industry. After two quiet seasons, the show became a breakout hit over the summer, and season three ended last month. In it, Leong leads a group of young investment bankers at a fictional London firm. It's a world far away from his childhood in Manhattan, Chinatown, where he recently met WNYC's Ryan Kailath to discuss his star turn.

I live right across the street. Ken Leung grew up on Catherine Street, a couple blocks off Bowery. And if you weren't around in the 70s, the Chinatown he describes is almost unimaginable. Like the night his family was at a variety show at the old Pagoda Theater. And suddenly, gunshots, the doors opened behind us, and there were gunshots, everybody hit the ground. But then they left.

and we didn't leave. Nobody left. Everyone just got back into their seats, and the show went on, and I fell asleep because nothing could compete with that in terms of excitement. Leone went to NYU to be a physical therapist, but an intro to speech class led to an intro to acting class, and there was no turning back.

He says acting gave him something that he never got in his upbringing. Practice being a person. in just all manner of situations. I can learn to be part of this world. And through that, I can find myself. His current show, Industry, has been a slow-burn success. The first two seasons are full of financial jargon and intrigue, but the show's broadened out,

moved into HBO's coveted 9 p.m. slot, where Succession and Game of Thrones aired. And the audience has grown considerably. Industry shoots in the UK, but Leon spends most of his time back in New York, and he's noticed people noticing. I've developed a great kind of peripheral awareness of double takes or when somebody's walking and suddenly stop walking. Do you see that couple taking a picture when we were on Moscow Street?

I kind of did, yeah. It's funny you say that because I don't really notice it in Chinatown. There's a thing in maybe the culture that's like, starts off very unimpressed. There's an expression, I say it a lot, and it's, cha. And it can be used in so many, you know, the meaning depends on the context,

but it's basically big deal. Like, so what? The show's finance talk through him at first, but consultants help the actors understand just enough to tap into their character motivations. And life in New York has helped inform the character. he says. For a while his son carpooled a school with a friend whose dad is in the industry. I guess a few mornings I went with them sitting in front and he was having his morning meeting

with his team in the car as he was driving. So it gave me a, at least a texture of what a meeting like that is like. Liang's own parents, like so many immigrants, did not bless his acting career. When he told them he planned to pursue it, his father wouldn't face him, and his mother just cried. Has that gotten better at all over the years? It's unchanged. We don't have a talking relationship, really. I mean, we don't really have a relationship to speak of. And they've never asked me about it.

Presumably, they know I'm still doing it. Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant pronunciation, usage. application. Amazing. Leong says a lot of people ask him what his dream project would be. And he usually says a romantic drama. But sitting here in Columbus Park in the middle of Chinatown, he says,

I love to be in something where I speak nothing but Cantonese, because Cantonese is so expressive. It's like the Sicilian of, it's like you talk with your hands. You know, whenever people say, you know, Chinese people, they always sound angry when they're talking. It's not that they're angry, it's that they're speaking Cantonese. That particular dream project will probably have to wait. A couple weeks ago, HBO renewed industry for a fourth season.

That's WMYC's Ryan Kailath. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Junae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.