New York City Mayor Eric Adams is warning residents that the growing unlawful migrant crisis will result in substantial budget cuts to every city service in the spring amid a lack of help from the state and federal governments.
Adams appeared on Pix on Politics on Sunday. He said that every city agency will be asked to reduce its budget in preparation for an upcoming “financial tsunami” caused by the migrant crisis.
“This is not a utopia. New York City cannot manage 10,000 people a month with no end in sight. That can’t happen, and that is going to undermine this entire city,” he said.
More than 100,00 unlawful migrants have arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022, and nearly 60,000 were staying in homeless shelters as of September, reported The New York Times. Many of the unlawful migrants have fled from Venezuela, as more than 7 million people have fled their native land.
While most Venezuelan asylum seekers fled to other parts of Latin America, some traveled to the United States. Roughly 150,000 unlawful migrants from Venezuela were apprehended between October 2021 and August 2022, a drastic increase from the estimated 100 that were apprehended yearly between 2015 and 2018, according to the NYT.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, many of the unlawful migrants were bused or flown from Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott has sent upwards of 30,000 unlawful migrants to self-declared “sanctuary cities” around the country to provide relief for Texas border communities most directly affected by the migration crisis.
“President Biden’s reckless open border policies have created a dangerous environment not only for tens of millions of Texans but for communities all across the nation,” Abbott previously said.
Adams warned on Sunday that the city may be forced to move women and children into “congregant settings” to account for the growing number of people, and some may have to live in outdoor tents.
In a video address to the residents of New York City on Saturday morning, Adams said that the crisis is set to cost the city $12 billion over the next three fiscal years.
Adams blamed the state and federal government, stating, “While our compassion is limitless, our resources are not.”
“We have not received substantial support from the federal or state governments to handle those costs or change the course of this crisis,” he said.
Due to the lack of external support, Adams said, the city is asking every agency to submit a plan that reduces spending by 5% for the next three fiscal years.
A spokesperson for Adams’ office told Fox News that the only option other than reducing city spending “is for the federal government to expedite work authorizations, declare a national state of emergency, and create a decompression strategy that would help spread asylum seekers across the state and country.”
The statements from Adams over the weekend are not the first time he has addressed the ongoing migrant crisis in the city.
During a town hall-style meeting on September 6, Adams claimed, “This issue will destroy New York City,” according to Fox News.
“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.”
