It was not so long ago that Mayor Eric Adams was boasting that The Big Apple was a sanctuary city. And while he still says migrants are welcome in his city, during a recent visit to El Paso, Adams admitted that New York City is overwhelmed.
Since last spring, New York has reportedly welcomed about 40,000 asylum seekers. Last week, the city saw a record of close to 840 asylum seekers in one day. Adams criticized the federal government's response to the influx of immigrants into U.S. and said, "New York cannot take more. We can't."
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), says the border visit was a "perfect opportunity" for Mayor Adams to tell President Biden that he has created a problem that is affecting "virtually every community across the United States."
"Even the biggest city in the United States simply [doesn't] have the resources," Mehlman continues. "They say it could cost New York City $2 billion this year to provide services to all these migrants. [Adams] needs to say to the president, 'Enough is enough. In the interest of the entire country, you need to put a halt to this.'"
Adams also criticized the governors who have been transporting immigrants straight from the border to sanctuary cities, including New York City. As Mehlman points out, Republican governors are not the only ones who have taken up this practice.
"Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, has started shipping migrants off to New York, and Eric Adams has starting shipping them around the state of New York," Mehlman relays.
He says Adams is not getting as much money from Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) as he wants, and so "it's turning into a giant shell game, where it seems like every jurisdiction is sending them someplace else."
