Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday blamed border states for creating a “funnel” that sends illegal immigrants into New York City, which recently received $100 million in federal aid to accommodate the arrivals.
“We have created a funnel,” he said on CBS Mornings. “All of the bordering states took the funnel right to New York City. New York City is the economic engine of this entire state and country. If you decimate this city, you’re going to decimate the foundation of what’s happening. Look at Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and now you’re hearing the governor of Massachusetts.”
The federal government recently distributed $100 million to NYC to help settle and provide resources to migrants, many of whom have been housed in hotels in Manhattan and upstate. With Republican states near the border like Texas, Arizona, and Florida fed up with the Biden administration’s lax immigration enforcement, they’ve shipped many migrants, some of whom are asylum-seekers, to northern blue cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
In Chicago, migrants, continuing to arrive by the busload, have been sleeping in police stations and other public spaces. The city in May said it was planning to shelter them in park buildings and abandoned schools. Democratic Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey on Tuesday declared a state of emergency amid the thousands of illegal migrants pouring in, which has pushed social services across the state to a breaking point.
“[D]ue to [the] rapid and unabating increases in the number of families with children and pregnant people,” the governor said in a statement, “The need for action is urgent.”
Healey’s move now permits the state to seek federal assistance and enlist the National Guard assist in dealing with the migrant surge. In December, Adams pleaded with President Biden and New York Governor Kathy Hochul to help the city prepare for an anticipated wave of migrants following the expiration of pandemic-era Covid policy, Title 42. The public health measure, instituted during the Trump administration, allowed border personnel to expel migrants as a means to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.
“Our requests for assistance have been mostly ignored. And while the New York federal delegation has repeatedly advocated for funding to be sent back to New York City, many in Congress-both Republicans and Democrats-have refused to lift a finger,” Adams wrote in a scathing letter at the time.
Last week, Senator Kyrsten Sinema said she was furious that a massive amount of federal dollars was granted to New York City instead of Arizona, which she said is bearing the burden of the border crisis alongside Texas.
“It is wrong and unfair that the money is going to places other than south Texas and south Arizona,” the now-independent senator said during an event in the Yuma sector of Arizona near the southern border. “The fact that a yeoman’s amount of this money went to New York City, in my opinion, is wrong because they are not a border state and they are not facing the kind of pressure that we are facing here. I want you to know that I am continuing to fight this, and I am livid.”
Some Texas localities have received federal funds to tackle their migrant problems. For instance, the city of El Paso was set to receive $6 million in advanced new funding for migrant services and the county another $1.38 million in early 2023.
However, the Biden administration has targeted Texas for attempting to reduce the number of illegal immigrants entering the state. In July, the Justice Department sued Texas over the floating barrier the state installed in the middle of the Rio Grande to deter migrants from crossing. The DOJ asked a court to order Texas to remove the 1,000-foot stretch of buoys that has been installed near the town of Eagle Pass and to prohibit the state from erecting new ones.
On Thursday, the CBS hosts noted that NYC is already grappling with a homelessness crisis. Adams suggested that Governor DeSantis, rather than the Biden administration, is partially responsible for the migrant fiasco because he sparked the trend among Republican states to relocate migrants to Democratic states.
DeSantis was denounced by a chorus of progressive politicians in September 2022 for flying illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, the affluent Massachusetts island, as a tactic to expose the Biden administrations’ border negligence. Critics said he was exploiting vulnerable people to score political points with his supporters.
“Think about the miracle that took place over the last year, when this really started coming from the governor who wanted to use people as pawns,” Adams said.