Authorities in New York City say that eight buses full of asylum seekers have arrived in the last 48 hours even though Mayor Eric Adams claims there’s no room for them.
“As the number of asylum seekers in our care continues to grow by hundreds every day, stretching our system to its breaking point and beyond, it has become more and more of a Herculean effort to find enough beds every night,” Adams said in a press release. “We will continue to work with the governor and elected officials across the state to address this crisis as New York City continues to do more than any other level of government.”
Where was Adams when the flood of illegal aliens was drowning Texas and Arizona? Back then, Adams felt perfectly comfortable bragging about his city’s “humane” sanctuary city policies and how “cruel” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was treating the new arrivals by sending a few thousand asylum seekers to New York City.
This crisis is not beyond human control. And Adams recognizes that by asking Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency. At a news conference Wednesday, Adams said a state of emergency would “allow federal funds to be allocated quickly to help address the urgent challenges we face.”
New York City spent $1.45 billion on shelter for migrants in fiscal 2023, and in June it approved $2.9 billion to fund new arrivals in 2024. But the city is already realizing it’s not enough.
“Our new estimates have us spending nearly $5 billion on this crisis in the current fiscal year,” Adams said. That surpasses the amount spent on the combined cost of the city’s sanitation, parks, and fire departments.
Only the combined pressure from blue state governors and mayors as well as other prominent Democrats in blue states will force Biden’s hand and open the federal spigot for aid.
“If we don’t get the support we need, New Yorkers could be left with a $12 billion bill,” Adams said in a speech from City Hall. “While New York City will continue to lead, it’s time the state and federal government step up.”
The Biden administration is slow-walking any major aid to the cities.
New York officials asked the Biden administration to consider a potential emergency declaration for New York State that might free up more resources; the extension of “temporary protected status” to migrants, which would allow more of them to work legally; and the use of federal venues in which to house them, according to a person who was in attendance and requested anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
The Department of Homeland Security has responded by assembling a team to assess the region’s ability to handle the migrant influx. The team is expected to report back to Secretary Mayorkas with recommendations for next steps, said a spokeswoman for the department.
DHS is “assembling a team to assess the region’s ability to handle the migrant influx”? Watch the news, guys. Read the newspapers. The region cannot handle the influx. That’s why they’re calling for help.
Sheesh.
In truth, the very last thing Biden wants to do is draw attention to the catastrophic mess he’s made of the border crisis. He’s moved it out of the realm of smaller border towns and dumped it in the lap of his Democratic Party friends on the East Coast in big cities. Perhaps Biden thinks that his Democratic mayors won’t make as big a stink as Abbott did before he started shipping illegals to the Big Apple.
It’s not just Adams who’s pleading for support. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey also declared a state of emergency amid a surge of migrant arrivals. She denounced “a federal crisis of inaction” and asked for faster work authorizations.
It’s those work authorizations that could ease the crisis substantially. But Biden has a political problem approving faster work authorizations because Republicans would rightly take that as a signal that he was granting “amnesty” to the illegals, which, in essence, is exactly what he’d be doing.
The political stunt of claiming to be “sanctuary” cities and states that Democrats pulled during the Trump years isn’t fun anymore. They’re learning how Texas and Florida feel. If they want relief, they’ll have to start putting more pressure on the Biden Administration by being honest about its immigration failures.
Biden can’t close the borders due to the worldwide outcry that would be heard from nations that don’t have skin in the game. So the crisis will go on until the American people demand an end to it.
