New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently warned that the city could be “destroyed” if it doesn’t get more help to support an influx of migrants — and is now starting to turn some asylum-seekers out of shelter.
“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,” the mayor said at a town hall earlier this month.
Since April 2022, more than 116,000 migrants have arrived in New York City. Most came from the US-Mexico border, fleeing hardship in their home countries and seeking asylum, a form of protection that would allow them to remain in the United States and not be deported. Many are not yet eligible to work in the United States due to asylum rules, which require migrants to wait about six months for a work permit. More than 60,000 of them remain in the city’s shelter system, according to a statement from the mayor’s office. If migration continues at its current pace, the city is on track to spend $12 billion over the next three fiscal years to shelter and support immigrants.
The crisis has deep roots. The United States’ immigration system has long been broken, amplifying an international humanitarian crisis, and the movement of migrants from the southern border into cities has highlighted and tested the system’s many fault lines. A report from the Adams administration blames a litany of factors, including the lack of comprehensive federal immigration reform, Trump administration policies, climate change, overwhelmed immigration courts, and the narrow paths immigrants face to becoming permanent residents.
Adams says New York City has stretched itself to the limit and is demanding greater help from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Biden administration.
The humanitarian crisis has also become a political flashpoint for New York. Protesters have criticized the city for housing migrants in schools and various residential neighborhoods and heckled lawmakers who speak on the subject to…
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