Mayor Eric Adams traveled to Washington on Wednesday to continue his campaign on an issue that has become a focal point of his mayoralty: immigration.
It is also an issue that is out of the purview of local government. For months, however, Mr. Adams has been using his position as perhaps the most prominent mayor in the country to prod President Biden and Congress on the immigration crisis, as the number of people crossing the southern border reaches record levels.
Mr. Adams has asked for more funding to help settle the more than 40,000 newcomers the mayor says have arrived in New York City since the spring, but also for policy changes, including faster work permits for asylum seekers and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants.
In a speech on Wednesday, delivered in front of a gathering of mayors just days after he returned from the southern border, Mr. Adams called the influx of asylum seekers to cities like New York one of the nation’s most serious problems. He added that the federal government should provide a point person to oversee the crisis and create a plan to disperse arriving migrants to locations around the country.
“Just a few days ago, I was in El Paso to see for myself how the asylum seeker crisis is affecting our border states and our entire nation. What I saw was not a state problem or a city problem. It is a national problem, driven by global forces, impacting regular people,” Mr. Adams said in his speech, given in a session at the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
“Every attempt to deal with immigration on a national level through legislation has been sabotaged, mostly by right-wing opposition. And cities are bearing the brunt of this failure,” the mayor added.
The debate over how to overhaul the nation’s immigration system has bedeviled federal policymakers for decades. The most recent crisis comes after years of haggling in Congress, where lawmakers have come up short even on policies with broader support, such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
More on Migrants in New York
New York City has always welcomed and depended on immigrants. But a new wave of people crossing the U.S. border is testing the city’s reputation as a world sanctuary.
While Mr. Biden has continued to push for a bigger change to the immigration system, he has also moved to restrict the flow of people across the border in recent months. The administration’s point person for border issues is Blas Nuñez-Neto, the acting assistant secretary for border and immigration policy for the Department of Homeland Security. But earlier in his administration, Mr. Biden also appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to deal with migration issues, including working with the nations from where migrants are emigrating. This month the president also traveled to El Paso.
The mayor’s trip to El Paso came one week after.
On his national tour, the mayor has said the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants has overwhelmed city services and has already cost $300 million so far. The Adams administration has said that the influx could ultimately cost $2 billion. New York City recently proposed a $103 billion budget with planned cuts in anticipation of future deficits.
The federal government has already approved $800 million in grants for states, local government and nongovernmental organizations dealing with the increase in migrants. Much of it is expected to flow to New York City.
Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said the city has failed to do all it could to help asylum seekers.
“I think we need to be talking about what is in the realm of possibility in this moment with the federal government that we have,” he said.
Mr. Awawdeh said the real issue is the city’s inability to move people from the shelter system to permanent affordable housing, adding that there were a record 69,075 people in the city’s shelter system as of Monday, according to city data. Approximately 24,000 asylum seekers are still in the shelter system.
Mr. Adams said the city is not capable of handling the surge without more federal help as thousands of migrants continue to arrive — sometimes by the hundreds in a day, according to the mayor.
“There is no more room. It’s not that we’re getting to that point. We’re at that point, and I wanted to be clear with New Yorkers of what we’re facing, how this is going to impact every city service that we deliver to New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams said Wednesday during an interview with Politico. “But at the same time, we’re going to continue to do our moral and legal obligation.”
Handling the surge of asylum seekers has been one of Mr. Adams’s biggest challenges since taking office a year ago. New York has a unique right-to-shelter law that requires it to provide housing to those who ask.
This fall, after the city’s main shelter system population hit a record, the city built a tent on Randalls Island when it expected the flow of migrants to increase. It was dismantled after the Biden administration placed new restrictions on who could cross the border. A proposal to house migrants in cruise ships was also abandoned after criticism that they would be isolated.
But on Wednesday at the conference, Mr. Adams said “every item is on the table,” including the potential use of cruise ships to house migrants.
Cruise ships are problematic because of accessibility issues and because they lack kitchen facilities for families, said Joshua Goldfein, a staff lawyer for the Legal Aid Society. “If they dock a cruise ship in some remote part of the city, they are going to make it impossible for people to move on with their lives,” he added.
Brad Lander, the city comptroller, has criticized the usefulness of Mr. Adams’s visit to the southern border. But he said he agrees with the mayor that “Washington must step up to bear the cost of funding” for the migrant surge.
“Where I disagree: There will always be room for newcomers in this city that has prospered from the contributions of immigrants for generations. With federal aid and work authorization to help new arrivals get on their feet, immigrants will drive New York City’s cultural and economic success for years to come,” Mr. Lander said in a statement.
Mr. Awawdeh said he was worried that the mayor’s recent push might be seen as “blaming immigrants” who were seeking safety.
He said the city could make some more specific policy requests of the Biden administration, such as providing two years of humanitarian parole for those seeking asylum who have already been admitted into the country, which would allow for work authorization, and instating a program similar to the refugee resettlement but for asylum seekers that would provide support.
“I think at the end of the day, the mayor just needs to stop grandstanding on the border for the media,” Mr. Awawdeh said.
Jeffery C. Mays
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