Mayor Eric Adams — who was federally indicted Wednesday — has spent the latter end of his first term mired in battles with the White House over the migrant crisis, with Hizzoner lobbing repeated accusations that President Biden has left the Big Apple to fend for itself.
“Help is not on the way,” Adams told reporters after meeting with Biden to discuss the crisis back in December 2023 — and ever since his rhetoric towards the White House has only grown grimmer.
“The national government has turned its back on New York City,” he said months later, adding that “every service in this city is going to be impacted by the asylum seeker crisis.”
Those comments were just a few in a long chorus of complaints about the Biden administration from an increasingly frustrated Adams — who at one point called on New Yorkers to march on DC over migrants being shipped by the thousands to the Big Apple.
The city spent at least about $5.5 billion on the migrant crisis as of August, which has gone toward housing more than 250,000 migrants since 2022.
The crisis is expected to cost the city upwards of $12 billion by 2026, but the count by July was already hundreds of millions of dollars more than than the predicted budget by that time.
City Hall estimates that amount represents about 69% percent of the total cost for the migrant crisis, while the state will absorb 30% — the federal government meanwhile is only expected to cover 1% of it.
Adams has called Washington’s refusal to fork over more cash “baffling,” explaining how over the course of numerous meetings with the Biden administration he has failed to be given a concrete commitment for greater help.
“I am lost. I am confused on this topic on why we still, almost 20 months later, we’re still talking about this issue and it has inundated the city,” Adams told Fox 5 in December 2023.
Months later in August Adams declared “we are past our breaking point,” but over a year later the crisis shows no sign of slowing down.
The city has claimed “sanctuary city” status for decades — meaning it refuses to cooperate with federal immigration officials, even when migrant fugitives are identified — and it was codified under Adams’ predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Migrants first started arriving — largely from the southern border — about two years ago.
Some were being bussed up on the orders of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who in spring 2022 rolled out a campaign of sending migrants from his overwhelmed state to cities which had declared themselves sanctuaries.
Adams was not pleased with this move, however, and accused Abbott of trying to “hurt black-run cities” and using human beings as political pawns.
Months after Abbott started his busing, Adams complained that both political parties were “doing nothing” to stop the crisis.
“The far right is doing the wrong thing. The far left is doing nothing,” he said in October 2022.
“I mean, the silence — I don’t believe the silence I’m hearing.”
But Biden’s administration has also actively participated in sending migrants to Gotham.
While roughly 37,000 of the city’s migrants had been bused in from Texas as of Spring 2024, the Department of Homeland Security had flown in about 33,000 migrants into the city — without coordinating any of it with City Hall, according to findings from the Center for Immigration Studies.