Freedom

Story by Germania Rodriguez Poleo For Dailymail.Com

New York City mayor Eric Adams issued a grave warning on Wednesday as he told the nation the city will be destroyed by the current migrant crisis – but the Democrat was singing from a very different song sheet only a year ago.

Last August, Adams went to Port Authority to welcome a bus full of asylum seekers sent from Texas by Republican governor Gregg Abbot, who argued progressive cities should also bare the costs of the influx of asylum seekers crossing the southern border.

Speaking to reporters at the time, the mayor said: ‘As the mayor of New York, I have to provide services families that are here, and that’s what we’re going to do – our responsibility as a city, and I’m proud that this is a Right to Shelter state, and we’re going continue to do that.’

But the buses kept coming, and a year later, Adams is pleading for federal and state aid – asking a judge to suspend the Right to Shelter policy as the city struggles to find room for the 110,000 asylum seekers that have arrived since the Spring of 2022.

In May he made major changes to the 40-year-old ‘Right to Shelter’ law that  guarantees a bed for anyone who needs it in the city, as his government asked for federal and state help to deal with the surge of migrants that he now says could destroy New York as we know it.

With Executive Order 402, Adams suspended aspects of the law, meaning the city no longer had to provide migrant families with their own room and could direct them to a communal shelter instead. 

In July, he told migrants the city was out of room, and to said it would distribute   flyers at the US-Mexico border telling newly arrived migrants to ‘consider another city.’

It’s a stark shift for the mayor, who promised while campaigning that NYC would remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration, saying in 2021, ‘We should protect our immigrants. Period.’

But the city still has a legal obligation to give shelter to those who ask for it, and Adams has desperately turned to a variety of city landmarks, makeshift shelters and temporary housing as short-term solutions. 

There are now nearly 60,000 migrants in the city’s care, with about 21,000 new migrant children starting school this year. As the school year kicked off on Thursday, some schools were forced to turn away students as the classrooms overflowed.

The migrant crisis has plagued Adams’ time as mayor since he took office in January 2022, and the former police officer warned Wednesday the problem is only getting worse.

‘We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month,’ he said. ‘Now we’re getting people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.’

‘Let me tell you something, New Yorkers. Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,’ he conceded. ‘This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City.’ 

Despite mayor Adams’ cries for help from the state and federal government, the city has not received aid to cover the extra costs, so the $4.7billion would come from the city’s budget. That amount is equal to the budgets for the city’s sanitation, fire and parks departments combined. 

Meanwhile, the buses full of migrants continue to arrive, with at least four unloading on Port Authority in just two days.

While officials have not revealed how many hotel rooms have been designated for migrants, hotel industry experts believe it’s as many as 10,000, as reported by The City.

The Roosevelt Hotel, Paul Hotel and Paramount Hotel are among the hotels designated for housing migrants in Manhattan.

Long lines of migrants, mostly men from Africa, are now often seen outside the storied locations.

Many of them never intended to come to New York in the first place, but staying is easy given the city has to offer them shelter by law.

‘A lot of these people arrive here without even knowing where theft are. Many of them wanted to go to Florida, even with DeSantis there. Others to Atlanta and California,’ said Edinson Calderon, founder of the organization Una Carta Salva Una Vida, which works to help asylum seekers after they are released from migrant detention centers.

Calderon told DailyMail.com that migrants from other cities have also taken advantage of the situation, and have come into the city to not have to pay rent and use a shelter.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently dispatched a small team to New York City to help determine how the federal government should respond.

The federal government has so far promised the city $140 million to help, although the city has yet to receive any of that money. A city spokesperson later clarified that requests for that money have been made but the delay could be because of routine bureaucratic reasons.

New York officials have been sounding the alarm for months over their inability to right the ship, with Adams cautioning that his office estimates the issue will cost the city in the region of $12 billion in just three years.

He declared a state of emergency in the fall and has repeatedly labelled the deluge a ‘humanitarian crisis’. The mayor’s failed requests for more federal funding led him to condemn President Biden in April for ‘failing’ the city.

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The crisis is also far from contained to New York, as numerous major metros have also struggled with housing asylum seekers. In Chicago, residents were stunned to find a police precinct had been turned into a shelter in May.

The problems at the southern border were significantly escalated when Title 42, a pandemic-era border policy that gave officials advanced powers to detain people, ended in May.

The day the policy expired on May 12, the number of illegal border crossings topped 10,000 – a figure that was maintained for several days