After months of pleading with the federal government to direct more relief towards the city’s migrant crisis, Mayor Adams laid into President Biden on Wednesday, saying that Biden and the White House have “failed New York City.”
“The national government has turned its back on New York City,” Adams said during a press conference at City Hall. “This is in the lap of the president of the United States. The president of the United States can give us the ability to allow people to work.”
Adams’ comments come at an inopportune time for Biden. Just last month, Biden tapped the mayor to serve as a surrogate for his reelection run.
The remarks were Adams’ most forceful to date on Biden’s role in aiding the city, as its agencies have struggled to shoulder the burden of hundreds of migrants arriving here each day.
Since last spring, more than 55,000 migrants have come to the Big Apple, many of them seeking asylum from countries in Latin America and Africa. According to data released by the city Wednesday, more than 34,000 of them are currently receiving some sort of assistance from the city government.
All of it has placed a huge burden on the Adams administration. Since last April, the city has had to rely on more than 100 emergency shelters and eight humanitarian relief centers in response.
Adams has called on the feds to speed up the process by which migrants receive work permits and has said for months that such a policy shift represents a key piece of relieving the pressure the city has felt since last April.
On Wednesday, the mayor made his demands more specific and explicit when he called on Biden to increase the number of staffers within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and reassign USCIS officers to reduce wait times for work permits to be authorized.
He also called on Biden to expand eligibility for migrants coming from Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Sudan, South Sudan and Cameroon to receive temporary protected status, which will enable them to be authorized to work.
The ability to work, Adams said, is the foremost concern among newly arrived migrants he’s spoken with.
“There’s only one thing they ask for. They don’t want our free shelter. They don’t want free food. They don’t want free clothing. They’re saying: ‘Can we work?'” Adams, a Democrat, said. “And we can’t point to the failure of the Republicans handing down real immigration reform because there’s real things we can do. This is in the lap of the president.”
Without accelerating the work permit process, Adams said other efforts such as relocating migrants to other parts of the state can’t move forward.
“When we speak with our colleagues throughout New York State, they say, ‘Listen, this is wrong what they’re doing to New York City, and we are willing to help you, but we can’t have it coming to our counties and they can’t work. Who’s going to pick up the tab?'” he said. “That’s why we’re here today. We’re saying to Washington D.C. that we can do a decompression strategy.”
During his remarks, Adams appeared visibly exasperated with the situation and described the White House putting him and his team off over the course of several months.
“Washington, it’s time to respond. Enough is enough,” he said. “New Yorkers deserve better from our national government. They deserve better.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for a response.
Adams’ call on the president to increase staffing at a key federal agency also comes at an interesting time for the mayor. He and his administration have struggled to fill key roles in city agencies dedicated to providing essential services like food stamps and housing vouchers to some of the city’s most vulnerable residents.
But Adams focused on the feds Wednesday, and to a lesser extent the City Council and press corps, in explaining why the city now finds itself in its current predicament. He blamed the Council for putting out rosier budget forecasts than his own budget experts have and the press for amplifying them.
“That adds to the flavor that Washington is feeling — ‘Oh, it can’t be that bad,'” he said. “Everyone needs to be on the same message based on the facts, not based on a political opinion.”
City Council spokesman Rendy Desamours shot back at Adams, saying his administration has made matters worse by failing to help New Yorkers already living in homeless shelters find permanent housing.
“This administration’s inability to help these New Yorkers exit the shelter system is due to their refusal to remove unnecessary regulations that block people from housing vouchers,” he said. “The mayor cannot say they are finding efficiencies when agencies cannot perform the critical functions of processing applications for food assistance, housing vouchers and other services New Yorkers need. The real problem is that city agencies don’t have the support or capacity to effectively or efficiently help New Yorkers and confront our city’s challenges.”
Despite the criticisms and the back and forth, the mayor reserved some praise for Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
Williams was in Washington D.C. on Wednesday with members of the city’s congressional delegation pushing for more relief from the federal government.
“This issue did not originate when the first bus arrived at Port Authority. It is rooted in decades of inaction toward reforming our immigration infrastructure,” the representatives said in a joint statement. “We must implement real, achievable, sustainable changes to our federal systems of immigration to help ensure that people coming to our country for its opportunities do not find themselves arriving in a new crisis of our own inertia.”
Adams and his budget director Jacques Jiha estimate the total bill for taking care of the migrants will ultimately come to $4.2 billion and that such an outlay will translate into being forced to cut key city services, something Adams says he wants to avoid.
But that stated desire didn’t stop one unnamed protestor who appeared in City Hall on Wednesday from voicing concerns about proposed cuts that could soon be coming to schools and libraries in Adams’ next budget.
“Mayor Adams, why are you cutting schools? Why are you cutting adult literacy? Why are you cutting services that asylum seekers and long-term residents rely on?” she yelled during Adams’ press conference.
After the woman was escorted away, the mayor attempted to provide an answer.
“People are still asking the question: ‘Why are we cutting?'” he said. “It’s called $4.2 billion. Every service in this city is going to be impacted by the asylum seeker crisis.”
