I was somewhat taken aback by the Reuters headline “New York Mayor says ‘no room’ in his city for migrants.” The report didn’t change my reaction:
The mayor of New York traveled to the Mexican border city of El Paso on Sunday and declared that “there is no room in New York” for busloads of migrants being sent to America’s most populous city.
Eric Adams, a Democrat, was also critical of the administration of Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden, saying “now is the time for the national government to do its job” about the immigrant crisis at America’s southern border.
The visit of a New York mayor to a southern border city about the issue of immigrants is unprecedented.
Busloads of migrants have been shipped north to New York and other cities by Republican run states. That has exacerbated a housing crisis in New York and a worsening homeless crisis in the city.
Adams’s trip to El Paso comes after he said the migrant influx into New York could cost the city as much as $2 billion, at a time when the city is already facing a major budget shortfall.
NYT (“Adams Visits the Border to Step Up Pressure on Biden for Migrant Funds“) adds some useful nuance:
More than 2,000 miles from New York City, Mayor Eric Adams stood outside a church in Texas on Sunday and told a group of migrants that he would fight for them to be able to work and to “experience the American dream.”
As the mayor’s words were translated into Spanish, the crowd began to clap and cheer.
But the mayor’s positive message contrasted with his difficult mission on his trip to the southern border — he is trying to increase pressure on President Biden to provide federal help to New York City, which is dealing with an influx of migrants. He is showing compassion for people whose lives have been upended while also insisting that they stop coming to his city.
The migrant crisis has become one of Mr. Adams’s greatest challenges as mayor. More than 40,000 people have arrived unexpectedly in New York City over the past year, straining the city’s budget as well as its system for sheltering homeless people.
After weeks of calling for more help from the federal government, Mr. Adams decided to visit the border. His trip came one week after Mr. Biden visited El Paso after announcing a new crackdown on border crossings.
The number of migrants apprehended while trying to illegally cross the border has hit record highs. The Border Patrol encountered 1.7 million migrants trying to cross illegally in the 12 months leading up to October 2021, the most since 1960.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat entering his second year in office, kept a busy schedule on his 24-hour trip to El Paso and sought to keep most of it out of the public eye. Only one event was open to reporters: a news conference on Sunday during which Mr. Adams called for help from federal officials for the places that are welcoming migrants.
“Our cities are being undermined — we don’t deserve this,” he said, before adding: “We expect more from our national leaders to address this in a real way.”
Mr. Adams said he would travel to Washington this week to continue his campaign, and he called on Mr. Biden to appoint a leader at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate a national response to the crisis.
POLITICO (“From Texas border, New York mayor vows to pressure U.S. government over migrants“) adds:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams visited El Paso, Texas, over the weekend, where he said he and fellow municipal leaders around the country would be teaming up to pressure the federal government for assistance handling the migrant crisis.
Adams touched down Saturday evening for what was billed as a 24-hour fact-finding mission, hosted by El Paso Mayor Oscar Leseer, a fellow Democrat. More than 40,000 migrants who have arrived in border towns like El Paso have subsequently traveled to New York City in the last year, an influx Adams has warned is overwhelming his administration’s ability to provide services.
During a press briefing Sunday, he pledged to form a coalition with mayors facing similar situations.
“I knew it was time for me, not to try to handle this problem from the city, but to come in to interact with the mayors across the country,” Adams said. “This has fallen on our cities. And I am now going to coordinate my mayors across the entire country to say: How do we respond to this directly?”
[…]
The city spent $366 million on services for asylum seekers last year, and Adams expects that sum to rise to $2 billion through June. Thus far, New York City has received just $8 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $2 million from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“This is a national crisis. FEMA deals with national crises. FEMA must step up, and there should be one coordinator to coordinate everything that is happening dealing with migrants and asylum seekers in our country,” Adams said.
The mayor’s first stop Saturday night was at a chain-link fence topped with razor wire frequently used as a border crossing point. Leeser then took Adams through a part of the city where asylum seekers often sleep on the streets. The following day, Adams met with the mayor and other El Paso officials before visiting a church that provides services to migrants. Outside, Adams and his Immigrant Affairs commissioner, Manuel Castro, talked with asylum seekers before visiting a county office that connects migrants with various programs and a processing facility run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
The mayor said misinformation has led many migrants to the five boroughs.
“There are websites that are advertising that [in] New York City basically streets are paved with gold, that there is automatic employment, that you are automatically going to be living in a hotel,” Adams said. “There’s a conversation among those who are … asylum seekers and migrants who are given the false impression that, if you come to New York City, everything is fine.”
[…]
The reality, which Adams said El Paso organizations are telling new arrivals, is far different.
“They are truly explaining to people that this is what’s happening in New York right now,” Adams said. “In New York you go there, you’re going to be living in congregate settings, that there is no more room in New York.”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who together with Adams recently criticized Colorado Gov. Jared Polis for his migrant busing policy, praised Adams’s trip to the border.
“Yesterday, @NYCMayor traveled to the border to draw attention to how the migrant crisis is impacting cities like New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and others,” Lightfoot tweeted Sunday. “I agree wholeheartedly with Mayor Adams that this is a national crisis that demands a national solution,” she wrote.
Progressives back in New York City, however, panned the visit.
“There are many ways to demand the help we need from Washington & Albany. But the mayor’s trip to Texas does little to deliver the $$ NYC needs to provide shelter & services,” City Comptroller Brad Lander tweeted. “Instead, it risks reinforcing a harmful narrative that new immigrants themselves are a problem.”
I’m not the biggest Adams fan. He comes across as self-aggrandizing, even by politician standards, and the combination of standard Democratic politics with the attitudes of a career cop is somewhat jarring. But I’m actually sympathetic to him here.
My initial reaction to the visit, based only on the Reuters report, was that he was playing into the hands of DeSantis and Abbot in rewarding their cynical and immoral treatment of migrants as objects. But, ironically, the handful that are being bussed to his city are a drop in the bucket to those traveling there on their own because they see it as the shining beacon of American opportunity.
Traveling to El Paso to lobby Joe Biden is a weird stunt and I don’t love the optics of it. But I get it: one of the key functions that only the Federal Government can handle, both by law and as a matter of resources, is controlling our borders. And it has failed, miserably, for decades.
While the actions of border state leaders, mostly Republicans, have been shameful, it’s also true that they’re bearing the brunt of the costs of the problem. But, it turns out, so are the majors of our biggest cities, even ones two thousand miles away.
