New York City mayor Eric Adams laid into Democratic governor Kathy Hochul’s handling of the ongoing migrant crisis on Tuesday.
“Governor Hochul has been a partner on subway safety, on crime, on a host of things, but I think on this issue the governor is wrong,” Adams told students during a fireside chat at a breakfast with the New York Law School.
“She’s the governor of the state of New York. New York City is in that state. Every county in this state should be part of this.”
The mayor’s comments are the latest in a series of escalating confrontations between City Hall and the Governor’s Mansion, with both sides pointing the finger at the other for failing to help the city accommodate a surge of roughly 100,000 migrants since the spring of 2022.
In early June, New York City filed a lawsuit against 30 upstate counties alleging that districts illegally prohibited local hotels from housing migrants bused upstate from the city. One City Hall lawyer described the rural pushback as “misguided and unlawful.”
The lawsuit zeroed in on attempts to “obstruct New York City’s lawful and reasonable efforts to address the ongoing statewide humanitarian crisis in a manner that is explicitly permitted by law and required by this statewide emergency,” the 37-page filing before a Manhattan state Supreme Court reads.
The Big Apple’s policies have caused many small-town communities outside the city to struggle to accommodate housing migrants. In July, guests at a Super 8 in Rotterdam, N.Y., were booted out of their motel rooms to make way for new arrivals from New York City.
In mid August, Hochul’s office released a letter touting the governor’s contributions. “The State has been a vital partner to the City since the beginning of this challenge,” the twelve-page letter noted. “The State has provided a broad range of support to the city. The Governor has declared a State Disaster Emergency and issued an Executive Order to support the City’s need for legal and regulatory flexibility. The State has directed significant State funds to the City. The State has made numerous State-owned properties available for the City to house migrants.”
Later in the statement, Hochul shifted blame for the ongoing crisis to the mayor. “In some instances, the City has failed to accept the State’s offers of assistance or recommendations for State facilities,” the letter said. “The City has not made timely requests for regulatory changes, has not always promptly shared necessary information with the State, has not implemented programs in a timely manner, and has not consulted the State before taking certain actions.”
“The City can and should do more to act in a proactive and collaborative manner with the State.”
On Monday, Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas provided Adams and Hochul with a series of “recommendations” to help staunch the flow of migrants, which drew the mayor’s condemnation. “This is a humanitarian crisis of a national proportion that this [the Biden administration has] been able to manage, but the dam has, it has broken.”
“New Yorkers deserve the facts, so let’s be clear: Our requests from the federal government remain the same, and quite frankly, unaddressed,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said in a statement on Monday.
A poll released last Tuesday found support for leading New York Democrats was plummeting across the political spectrum.
Nearly half of respondents (46 percent) to a Siena College Research Institute poll said that newly arrived migrants to the Big Apple were a “burden” and not a “benefit” to the state, compared to less than a third who thought otherwise. Additionally, almost 60 percent of New Yorkers surveyed think the state has done enough already to assist and should instead staunch the surge of newcomers.
“New Yorkers — including huge majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, upstaters and downstaters — overwhelmingly say that the recent influx of migrants to New York is a serious problem for the state,” a spokesperson for the group said in an official statement.