The number of new court cases involving immigrants lacking permanent legal status has plummeted on Long Island and around the country since President Joe Biden's June order restricting entry into the country for most asylum-seekers, according to a new federal data analysis. Robert Brodsky reports in NEWSDAY that Biden's presidential proclamation, issued amid a record increase of illegal border crossings, stated that migrants who cross the border without authorization — absent exceptional circumstances — wouldn't be eligible for asylum and would be subject to expedited deportation. It didn't affect immigrants who previously filed legal claims for asylum.

In New York State, new case numbers dropped 74% from December to July, while cases fell by 68% nationwide and nearly 61% on Long Island during that same time frame, according to the analysis from Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse or TRAC.

The policy is a change from the previous practice of letting most people who sought asylum after crossing the border illegally be freed from custody and live in the U.S. while awaiting court proceedings.

Under Biden’s order, migrants can be returned into Mexico or their country of origin when the 7-day average of daily border crossings exceeds 2,500 people. The restrictions remain in place until 14 days after the 7-day average drops below 1,500 people.

The rule allows unaccompanied children, victims of a severe form of trafficking and other noncitizens with a valid visa or other lawful permission to legally enter the U.S. People deemed ineligible for asylum still can apply for protection under terms of an anti-torture international human rights treaty.

The restrictions also don't apply to immigrants who present themselves at official border crossings with an appointment provided through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobile app known as CBP One.

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East Hampton Town has issued a public alert stating that pieces of a 300-foot, fiberglass and foam turbine blade from the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind farm, situated 15 miles south of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, may wash up on the shores of Montauk.

“The debris has been described as ‘non-toxic fiberglass fragments’ and is deemed ‘not hazardous to people or the environment,’” according to a statement the town disseminated via social media on Wednesday. Nonetheless, the statement continues, Vineyard Wind is asking that “only their recovery team handle this material.” A team is being deployed to “clean up the affected areas.”

The public is asked to not handle any found debris, rather to contact Marine Patrol at 631-537-7575. Christopher Walsh reports on 27east.com that Councilman David Lys, the East Hampton Town Board’s liaison to the Recreation Department, which oversees beaches and lifeguards, said yesterday that to his knowledge there have been no sightings or recovery of any such debris on town beaches or waterways.

A blade of an 853-foot-tall turbine at the 62-turbine wind farm, which delivers electricity to Massachusetts, collapsed on July 13. According to Engineering News-Record, the chief executive officer of Massachusetts-based GE Vernova, which designed the wind farm’s turbines, said that the collapse was due to a “manufacturing deviation” and not engineering or design.

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Two baymen pulled a coin minted in 1736 — a duit, or one-cent piece, stamped with the crest of the Dutch East India Company, the currency of record in the years before the British colonies began minting their own money — out of the mud of Shinnecock Bay last week. Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that Westhampton bayman John Gillin and his cousin E.J. were digging clams together in eastern Shinnecock on August 13 when they dug up the coin, worn down at its edges but still clearly displaying an etching on one side and three words on the other and