MEXICO CITY — Mayor Eric Adams touched down in Mexico’s capital city Wednesday evening for the first leg of his four-day migrant discouragement tour.
Adams said before takeoff he plans “to speak with [Central and South American] leaders there to really start the process of understanding the flow of migrants here to New York City and throughout the entire country.”
“This is the type of conversation we believe we need to have both local, national and international to come up with a resolution,” the mayor whispered in a social media video from his aisle seat while again sporting a hat for the one-win Jets.
Hizzoner arrived ahead of schedule just before 7 p.m. local time and headed to the Historic Center of Mexico City, where he was scheduled to speak to business leaders and investors at the North Capital Forum.
Following the event, Adams will do a private tour of the Basilica de Guadalupe.
The mayor plans to use his trip, which includes stops in Ecuador and Colombia, to dissuade migrants from coming to the Big Apple and learn more about the dangerous path asylum seekers are taking to get to the southern border.
“We are going to tell them that coming to New York doesn’t mean you want to stay in a five-star hotel,” Adams said on Tuesday. “It doesn’t mean that when you come here, you automatically are going to be allowed to work.”
“I want to give the people of those areas a real story of what is happening in New York City,” he added.
The trip comes as the daily number of asylum seekers arriving soars, with the city recording 800 more migrants in a single day, twice the prior average.
The administration has floated scheduling a trip to raise the profile of the crisis that has overwhelmed New York City’s shelter system but has been previously shot down.
On Thursday, the mayor will visit migrant sites south of the border at Puebla, Mexico, before jetting to Quito, Ecuador, the following day.
He will spend his final day in Bogotá, Colombia, where he plans to head to the Darién Gap, a dangerous jungle path that smugglers use to bring many asylum seekers from South to North America.