While announcing a state of emergency in the Big Apple, New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged the Biden administration to act decisively on the border problem.
Adams criticized the busing initiatives led by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, which have transported around 17,000 migrants to New York City.
The mayor said that since September, five to six buses have been coming daily, with nine arriving yesterday and eight on Friday.
42 emergency shelters have been established in New York since April, 5,500 children have been enrolled in public schools, and efforts have been made to assist asylum seekers connect with family and support.
Adams cautioned that 100,000 more migrants might eventually arrive in the city by the end of the year, which would have a negative impact on New York’s finances.
We anticipate spending at least $1 billion on this situation by the end of the fiscal year, all because we have a working, caring system, Adams added.
The mayor urged the federal government to bolster border security, provide money to areas being overrun by immigration, and persuade other communities to welcome the newcomers.
“A practical decompression strategy at the border is required to reduce the number of asylum seekers leaving the country.” stated Adams. To make sure everyone is doing their share, we need a concerted effort to relocate asylum seekers to other cities in our nation.
The mayor said that the city’s shelter system already houses roughly 61,000 individuals, 20,000 of them are children, and that occupancy levels are already close to 100%.
Although our compassion is boundless, Adams added, “our resources are not.”
This cannot continue,
Adams asked for contributions from the corporate sector to support the struggling city and made requests to hotels and organizations for temporary shelter for the incoming immigrants.
The mayor utilized his emergency powers to order the city’s agencies to speed up the building of more “Humanitarian Relief Centers” notwithstanding the city’s most recent construction of a “tent city” on Randalls Island to shelter the surge of migrants.
The Adams cautioned that the Randalls Island facility will fill up quickly if we didn’t move quickly. Even as winter approaches, we will need to open yet another location.
The mayor also said that the city would have been able to set aside funds to assist the migrants if representatives from Texas and Arizona, where the bulk of the migrants are being bussed from, had first contacted New York to arrange a strategy.
However, New York City is now being pushed to shoulder much more than its fair part of this national catastrophe because we weren’t given the help and information we requested.
The mayor continued by condemning the present busing scheme, saying that “our right to shelter legislation, our social services, and our principles are being misused by others for political advantage.”
Adam’s statement acted as a cross-party denunciation of the border issue as it emerged that El Paso, which is headed by Democrats, was sending more than twice as many migrants as Abbott.
In contrast to earlier, more impromptu transit, El Paso, which is located over the border from Juarez, Mexico, has bussed some 7,000 migrants to New York City since late August and more than 1,800 to Chicago.
As part of a high-profile push to draw attention to the unprecedented numbers of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, Abbott bused more than 3,000 migrants to New York City and more than 900 to Chicago.
Additionally, approximately 10,000 migrants have been bused to Washington, D.C. from Texas and Arizona combined.
The program in El Paso, according to Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser, is “totally different” from past busing initiatives and aims to “treat people with respect.”
In contrast to Abbott’s program, who is running for re-election in the midterm elections on November 8, the city’s busing initiative has garnered less attention.
However, unlike other addresses when Adams explicitly attacked Abbott, the Democrat mayor on Friday avoided bringing up political parties in favor of talking about the border states as a whole.
Speaking on behalf of the mayor of New York City, Kate Smart previously said that while El Paso and the city perform some coordination, New York is not informed of the number of migrants on board.
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