During a visit to El Paso, Texas, Mayor Eric Adams said New York had overwhelmed the city with asylum seekers.
“New York can’t afford more. We can’t,” he said. “There’s no more room in New York.”
Adams called on mayors across the country to unite to address the rapid immigration crisis.
“This is a national issue,” Adams said at a news conference in Texas Sunday night. “We have to have real immigration reform, and we have to create short-term solutions now and make sure the costs of doing so don’t fall on our local cities.”
The agenda for Adams’ Sunday day trip included meeting with local officials, visiting local shelters, going to facilities that provide support services for asylum seekers and the southern border, and visiting U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities.
On Friday, his administration said more than 3,100 asylum seekers arrived in New York City over the past week, including 835 in one day alone — the largest single-day arrivals ever in the city’s history.
“I know now is the time for me to not deal with this from the city, but to come and engage with mayors across the country,” he said. “This has fallen upon our city.”
Adams said he will meet this week with the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., where he plans to “raise the issue and how we can go about coming up with a really coordinated effort to create an agenda to address this issue.”
He told reporters Sunday that he planned to work with mayors who were directly affected, as well as those who were not.
“It’s El Paso today, it’s their city tomorrow,” Adams said.
He said he planned to do “as many site visits as possible” and come up with “official plans from the cities for the central government to implement without input”.
.@NYCMayor Stopped at the border again this afternoon, listen @CBPEfforts at the border.
Mayor Adams sees a young boy walking along a wall in hopes of crossing the U.S. pic.twitter.com/QgEDRb5thQ
— Fabien Levy (@Fabien_Levy) January 15, 2023
“This is a man-made crisis that needs to be solved by men and women across the country. I’m going to reach out to the mayors of this country and say ‘Together, we didn’t create this problem, but together we will find a solution.’ But These solutions must be implemented by the federal government,” Adams said.
“I’m very disappointed in what we’ve done to the cities of this country,” he said, adding that he saw no “sense of urgency” from the government.
Asked how much he wanted from the federal government, Adams said they should pay for the “full cost” that El Paso, New York City and other cities are paying to deal with the immigration crisis.
“I think we have to appoint a FEMA leader to look at this and coordinate our response,” he said, adding that the immigration crisis was a “national emergency.”
When Adams arrived in Texas late last night, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser took him on a tour of “an area known to be where asylum seekers cross the border, and where many asylum seekers sleep,” the law said. said Fabien Levy, Adams’ press secretary.
.@NYCMayor Landed in El Paso, Texas tonight to investigate the asylum seeker crisis on the southern border.
El Paso Mayor Leeser took us on an impromptu visit to an area known to be where asylum seekers cross the border, and where many sleep. pic.twitter.com/utlT2KmdpD
— Fabien Levy (@Fabien_Levy) January 15, 2023
