New York City Mayor Eric Adams blamed Republicans Sunday for issues the Big Apple is facing as the sanctuary city’s officials struggle to house, feed, and care for thousands of migrants.
“If this is properly handled at the border level, this issue can be resolved while we finally get Congress, particularly the Republican Party, to deal with comprehensive immigration policy,” Adams told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan.
Adams told Brennan the $30 million the White House has pledged to help NYC deal with the migrant crisis is insufficient. According to Adams, the city has spent close to $4.3 billion and counting.
“When you look at the price tag, $30 million comes nowhere near what the city is paying for a national problem,” he said.
When Brennan challenged him on the “migrant magnet” powered by New York City’s sanctuary city status, Adams deflected, again focusing on Republicans.
“The problem is that Republicans for far too many years have failed to deal with real immigration reform. This is a national issue.”
He suggested allowing migrants and asylum seekers to have work status as a partial solution.
Some migrant moms who recently illegally migrated from Ecuador have taken to the unlicensed selling of fruit and drinks along dangerous highways and busy intersections, as the New York Post reported Sunday.
The mothers, with babies strapped to their backs, sell the locally purchased food to motorists who have stopped for red lights. Councilman Robert Holden, a Democrat, called the scary situation potentially “catastrophic.”
Holden was referring to the possibility the women or their children could be killed or maimed while weaving among vehicles selling their wares. Holden’s appeal to the NYPD to address the situation with more vigor has met with little success.
Mayor Adams says a “decompression strategy” is required to take some of the pressure off the city, which still has 42,000 migrants “in our care.” He characterized the bussing of migrants to cities like New York an “unfair” burden.
Part of that decompression strategy, bussing migrants to nearby counties, met with instant backlash and legal challenges.
Sunday morning, Suffolk County announced plans to draft a resolution to assure its residents do not bear the financial burden if NYC busses migrants there, News 12 Long Island reported.
New York City made a “conscious decision to be a sanctuary city, Suffolk County did not,” Suffolk Legislature’s Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey said in a press conference covered by News 12. McCaffrey added that the county’s top priorities are “public safety and fiscal responsibility.”
Orange County and Rockland County have already taken action to stem the tide of migrants being bussed in from New York City.
Watch a portion of NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ interview with “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan below.
\u201c.@NYCMayor Eric Adams tells @MargBrennan the federal government should be directing migrant movement throughout the U.S. \u201cWe have 108,000 cities, villages, towns. If everyone takes a small portion, it\u2019s not a burden on one city.\u201d\u201d— Face The Nation (@Face The Nation)
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