Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday criticized the Biden administration’s response to New York City’s ongoing migrant crisis, calling it the “worst government blunder” in his “entire life.”
Cuomo, who left office in 2021 due to a sexual-harassment scandal, blamed New York City’s “migrant problem” on the Biden administration, which has caused an explosion in illegal immigration, with a record 2.3 million migrants arriving at the Southern border in fiscal year 2023, more than 100,000 of whom have made their way to New York City to take advantage of the free housing and benefits on offer.
“This is the worst government blunder I have seen in my entire life,” he told congregants at Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church in the Bronx. “You have the federal government, which is where it starts, it’s standing at the border with a sign that says, ‘Come to the United States of America and claim asylum.’ And two million people come. Of course, from Venezuela, Honduras, and Guatemala. They get to the border and they say, ‘Where do you want to go?’ And they say, ‘I want to go to New York.’ What are they going to say? I want to go to Nevada?”
Cuomo then shifted his attention to New York governor Kathy Hochul, who has taken steps to channel the flow of migrants to New York City specifically, rather than allowing them to be transported to other areas of the state, in response to lawsuits against the city filed by upstate counties objecting to the city sending migrants to their jurisdictions without permission.
“They get to New York — New York state says to them, ‘You can only go to New York City.’ Only New York City. Not the Hudson Valley, not upstate New York, not Long Island — only New York City. Why?” he asked.
“Because politically for their politics, they want the problem in New York City and they don’t want the political problem in the rest of the state,” Cuomo answered. “But it makes no sense. Now New York City has over 100,000 migrants who have come to the city. And New York City has to provide the housing, the education, and the medical care. It makes no sense.”
New York City has seen more than 175,000 migrants arrive since April 2022, when Texas governor Greg Abbott started sending buses full of migrants to Democrat-controlled sanctuary cities. The record inflow of asylum seekers has overwhelmed New York City and its resources, to the point that it is facing a $7 billion budget crisis.
Mayor Eric Adams has since called for the federal government to provide resources to the city, but has not received outside help from Washington, D.C. In January, the incumbent governor announced the state would allocate over $2 billion to help manage New York City’s migrant crisis.
Similar to Cuomo, Adams also recently blamed the Biden administration’s handling of illegal immigration and called for a “national solution” to fix the problem.
“The national government must solve this, and the challenges that we are facing, no city should be facing these challenges,” Adams said in February. “And I kept saying this over and over again. We’re going to start seeing the visualization of the failure of the policy . . . we’re seeing the visual of what a failed national policy is producing.”