NEW YORK — Against a backdrop of drastic charts and flanked by senior members of his administration, Mayor Eric Adams made perhaps his most forceful case yet Wednesday for more money from the federal government to address the city’s costly migrant crisis.
The city is already out $817 million because of it, said Jacques Jiha, his budget director. And it’s staring down a $1.4 billion price tag for the fiscal year that ends June 30. There’s also a looming $2.9 billion for the next year, not to mention the impending lapse of Title 42, a restrictive Trump-era immigration policy.
Adams said it’s still unclear why the federal government — the White House in particular — hasn’t allocated more dollars to help the city respond to the crisis, which he insisted would help stave off cuts at the local level that are drumming up controversy around City Hall.
“The president and the White House have failed this city,” he said, adding that a less-than-punctual state budget is only adding to the stresses.
He indicated he wants the federal government to grant Temporary Protected Status to asylum seekers so they can receive work permits because the city is currently experiencing a “black market” of workers without them.
“A substantial number of them, I believe, are being exploited, are being mistreated,” he said.
It was quite the political split screen: a couple hundred feet away members of the Progressive Caucus chastised the mayor’s proposed budget cuts (which he has insisted be referred to as “efficiencies”). In the most recent round a few weeks ago, his administration asked most city agencies to cut their staffs for the upcoming fiscal year by 4 percent.
The caucus, which butts heads with the mayor routinely — even more so than the typically critical City Council — is calling for $4 billion in affordable housing funding and $350 million toward “right to counsel” services for those who cannot afford an attorney. They demanded more dollars to be earmarked to shore up mental health and education services, too.
“He is defunding everything we need to keep us safe,” said Council Member Alexa Avilés, who has defined his administration’s priorities largely through a public safety lens. The caucus lost more than a dozen of its members earlier this year amid an internal brawl over whether to defund the NYPD.
The City Council released its official response to the mayor’s budget a few weeks ago, claiming the city would make billions more this fiscal year and the next than it had originally projected.
Adams called those projections “false reporting” and said the inability of local officials to get on the same page has contributed to the federal government’s feet-dragging.
“Running your mouth is not running a city,” Adams said of his critics.
The mayor and the Council have an April 26 deadline for a deal, though uncertainty in Albany could muddy that timeline, too. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who also echoed Adams’ calls to expand temporary protected status, said a commitment in the state budget to pay a third of the costs promised by Gov. Kathy Hochul “has yet to materialize.”
Asked Wednesday about the state helping the city with the cost of the asylum seekers, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said it would be a priority in ongoing budget talks.
“I know that members of my conference are very, very interested in making sure that we are helpful in this process,” she told reporters. “It’s not something that we’re spending a lot of time talking about, but there is a consensus that we do have to be helpful.”