New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, said on Monday that America’s national immigration policy is to blame for his city’s migrant crisis.
“The national government must solve this, and the challenges that we are facing, no city should be facing these challenges,” Adams said. “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.”
“We have to fix this with a national solution,” Adams added.
The mayor has said before that the federal government should bail New York City out of its illegal immigrant–induced financial crisis.
“New Yorkers did not create an international humanitarian crisis, but New Yorkers have been left to deal with this crisis almost entirely on our own,” Adams said in a speech last year. “It has been fueled by those in Congress who stand in the way of real immigration reform, by governors who have used vulnerable asylum seekers as political pawns, by the indifference of leaders across the nation.”
The state and federal government should shoulder the looming $12 billion bill to “accommodate asylum seekers” in New York, he added in the speech. “We are past our breaking point,” he said. “New Yorkers’ compassion may be limitless, but our resources are not.”
Although some Republicans applaud Adams’s criticisms of the Biden administration’s national immigration policy — former vice president Mike Pence in September gave a “hat tip to the mayor of New York, who’s been willing to call out President Joe Biden and his administration for their absolute failure to secure the southern border” — others have condemned Adams’s refusal to repeal the city’s sanctuary policies. New York City is required to provide shelter to immigrants under its sanctuary city status. The policy also forbids federal authorities from prosecuting immigration violations.
Adams has supported New York City’s designation as a sanctuary city since he hit the mayoral campaign trail. Then-candidate Adams promised in 2021 that “New York City will remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration.” Last September, however, Adams admitted that the migrant crisis would “destroy New York City” and has since pressured the federal government to give the city the financial means to accommodate illegal immigrants.
New York congresswoman Claudia Tenney said that Democratic politicians should stop encouraging illegal immigration.
“Mayor Adams and other far-left mayors throughout the country refused to follow our national laws and have incentivized illegal immigrants to flock to our country thanks to their open-door, sanctuary city policies. Now that these policies aren’t scoring them political points but are taking resources away from taxpayers and causing outrage from their constituents, they are working to pass the blame to anyone but themselves,” Tenney told National Review. “Instead of evading accountability, Mayor Adams should support the policies outlined in House Republican’s H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, and end this crisis.”
Adams should take responsibility for the migrant crisis his city’s policies helped to create, former New York mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa told National Review.
“He laid out an entire menu, from cradle to grave, on what we were going to do for the migrants — treat them better than our own homeless, our own emotionally disturbed, even veterans. He precipitated this,” Sliwa said. “[Adams] has really only himself to blame on this. He started all of this and now he doesn’t know how to finish it — he doesn’t know how to close the door on the continued flood of migrants coming in.”
Adams could curb several city-wide programs to disincentivize the migrant influx, Sliwa added. For example, the city could squash a soon-to-be-launched $53 million program that will give pre-paid credit cards to illegal immigrants. The program will supply immigrants with nearly $1,000 per month for food and baby supplies. Sliwa also pointed to Adams’s use of the Roosevelt Hotel to house migrants as another policy that encourages illegal immigration.
Joe Biden, Sliwa said, is the “Papi Chulo” of the migrant influx, who welcomes migrants at the border. From there, Eric Adams “rolls out the red carpet” and invites illegal immigrants into New York City with first-rate accommodations.
“If you had a place that you wanted to come, you’re not going to Denver, you’re not going to Chicago, you’re not going anywhere else. You’re coming to New York,” Sliwa said. “The moment you go into that Roosevelt Hotel, [New York] may give you a snap card with $1,000 that you can purchase food with each month, you get accommodations at a hotel, [officials] move quickly to get your work permits.”
“Adams likes to blame the national government but he played a role in all of this. He supported Biden, he says that the city policy is to support open borders,” he continued. “If your city policy is to support open borders, you’re part of the problem. You’re not a solution.”