Mayor Adams on Wednesday accused Colorado officials of sending migrants to New York City without giving his administration a heads-up — but a spokesman for the state’s Democratic governor strongly pushed back against that characterization.

Conor Cahill, Gov. Jared Polis’ press secretary, told the Daily News that Colorado has out of “dignity and respect” provided transportation for some migrants who asked to travel to New York after first arriving in the Centennial State.

“If the mayor is insinuating that people are being ‘sent’ like Republican Governors have been doing, he is simply incorrect,” Cahill said, referencing uncoordinated migrant transports to New York orchestrated by GOP officials in states like Texas and Arizona.

“We respect the agency and authority of migrants to make their own decisions about where they are going,” Cahill continued. “Trapping migrants in a city that is not their destination is simply inhumane. No one is being sent against their will, we even ask migrants to acknowledge that they can stay if they choose to, and we are simply not going to hold people hostage in Colorado.”

Earlier in the day, Adams tore into Polis for sending migrants.

“Everyone knows what we’re going through, and for that governor to do that, this is just unacceptable,” Adams said at a press conference in Brooklyn, adding that Polis “didn’t even notify us” about the migrant transports.

He did not provide a timeline or details about the number of migrants coming from Colorado.

Adams spokesman Fabien Levy said “the mayor’s comments stand” when asked for a response to Cahill’s statement Wednesday evening.

Adams, who has also grown increasingly critical lately of the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant crisis, first said Tuesday he had gotten word that Polis was sending migrants to the city, which has welcomed more than 30,000 Latin American nationals since this spring as part of a wave of asylum seekers from the southern border.

The migrant influx has strained the city’s social safety net to the brink of collapse, with Adams warning he’s expecting his administration to shell out $1 billion this fiscal year on sheltering and providing services for the desperate travelers.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks on Nov. 8, 2022, in downtown Denver.

Most of the migrants in New York fled poverty and violence in their home countries and crossed the Mexican border into Texas and Arizona in hopes of obtaining U.S. asylum.

Adams previously lambasted Republican governors in those border states for sending migrants to New York without coordination — and his harsh words for Polis marks an unusual rebuke of a fellow Democrat.

At the same time, Polis isn’t the only Democrat Adams blasted Wednesday in regards to the city’s migrant crisis.

He also took aim at progressives in the City Council who have criticized how his administration has accommodated the migrants — and urged them to instead blame Biden’s administration for not doing more to help New York.

“They’re waking up every day saying, ‘Well, why aren’t you doing this, why don’t you do that?’” Adams said of Council Democrats. “No — why don’t you tell the federal government to fix this mess that they created. This is unacceptable.”

Chris Sommerfeldt

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