New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave his most ominous prediction yet for the fate of the Big Apple, which is grappling with the influx of more than 110,000 migrants so far.
“Let me tell you something, New Yorkers. Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City,” Adams said during a Town Hall meeting on the Upper West Side on Wednesday. “We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month.”
“We had a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut. Every service in this city is going to be impacted. All of us,” Adams said. “It’s going to come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000. I’m telling you now with 110,000. The city we knew we’re about to lose. And we’re all in this together.”
Adams placed blamed on Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s operation busing migrants from the border to self-declared sanctuary jurisdictions. But the federal government also relocates migrants from the border to elsewhere in the U.S.
“What happened? Started with a mad man down in Texas, decided he wanted to bus people up to New York City,” Adams said Wednesday. “One hundred ten thousand migrants. We have to feed, clothe, house, educate the children, wash their laundry sheets, give them everything they need, health care. And this team here, we stated, let’s do everything possible before we have to push it out into neighborhoods and communities. Month after month, I stood up, and I said, ‘This is going to come to a neighborhood near you.’”
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“We’re getting no support on this national crisis,” the mayor added, noting at one time, most migrants arriving in New York City were from Venezuela, but now more come from Ecuador and even Russian-speaking people and west African people are “coming through Mexico” to attempt to claim asylum in the United States.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams addressed the migrant crisis during a a Town Hall meeting on the Upper West Side Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. (NYC Mayor’s Office)
“Now we are getting people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City,” Adams said. “And everyone is saying it’s New York City’s problem. Every community in this city is going to be impacted.”
Separately Wednesday, Adams announced the transition of an emergency respite site into a new Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center (HERRC) at Austell Place in Long Island City as the number of migrants currently in the city’s care approaches 60,000, and as more than 110,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since last spring.
“As asylum seekers have continued to arrive in New York City at an average rate of more than 2,400 every week, conditions on the ground required that the city transition the site to a large-scale congregate setting for single men,” the mayor’s office said in a press release. “The humanitarian relief center will start by providing shelter for up to 330 single men, but, once expanded to full capacity, the site will host a total of almost 1,000 asylum seekers.”
New York Mayor Eric Adams addresses the media at a rally in support of asylum seekers on Aug. 15, 2023 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The expansion of the site makes it the city’s 16th large humanitarian relief center as part of the more than 200 shelter sites the city is operating, Health and Human Services Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said at a separate news conference Wednesday.
As of Sept. 3, she said the city had over 112,300 people in its care, including over 59,700 asylum seekers. Over 10,100 asylum seekers have come through the city intake center since September 2022. The city has opened 206 sites, including 15 humanitarian relief centers. Last week from August 28 to Sept. 3, more than 27,000 new asylum seekers entered the city’s care.
A demonstrator holds a sign depicting New York City Mayor Eric Adams at a rally protesting the opening of a temporary shelter for asylum seekers in the Staten Island borough of New York, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Hundreds of asylum seekers continue to arrive to our city every day and our heads are barely being kept above water,” Williams-Isom said. “There are solutions to this emergency. We need expedited work authorization, additional financial support, a federal declaration of emergency, a national and a state wide decompression strategy to relieve the pressure that we are feeling here in New York City. There are solutions here. The status quo is not working, and New Yorkers are demanding that we do more.”
