Biden dispatches top aide to meet with NYC Mayor Eric Adams as migrant crisis reaches boiling point: report
New York City Mayor Eric Adams to meet with White House aide Tom Perez, report says
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}President Biden is reportedly dispatching one of his top aides to meet with New York City Mayor Eric Adams Thursday as the worsening migrant crisis is expected to cost the Big Apple a whopping $12 billion by 2025.
Tom Perez, who serves as senior adviser and assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, is to meet with Adams at City Hall, the New York Post reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter. Fox News Digital reached out to Adams’ office Thursday to confirm the meeting but did not immediately hear back.
This comes after Adams on Wednesday held a press conference saying he supported Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who earlier this week called on the federal government to expedite work authorizations for "migrant families." Adams went a step further, demanding Biden declare a federal state of emergency. He also placed blame on Republicans.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The immigration system in this nation is broken. It has been broken for decades. Today, New York City has been left to pick up the pieces. Since last year, nearly 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in our city asking for shelter," Adams told reporters. "That's almost the population of Albany, New York."
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Tom Perez attends the official White House portrait unveiling ceremony for President Barack Obama on Sept. 7, 2022. Biden is reportedly sending Perez to New York City to meet with Mayor Eric Adams on the migrant crisis. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
"We are past our breaking point," the mayor added. "New Yorkers' compassion may be limitless, but our resources are not. And our partners at the state and federal levels know this."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"We need a statewide decompression strategy to help free up space in our shelter system and reduce the pressure on our city's resources," Adams said of his controversial plan to relocate migrants across the state, which has received blowback in court from several Republican-controlled jurisdictions.
"The state can also allocate more funding to match our needs on the ground," he said. "And we are willing to work with every locality across New York state to provide support for asylum seekers because they need to play their part just like Buffalo, White Plains and others have."
"And while many Republicans in Congress may be holding up critical reform, the White House can help us now," Adams said. He noted how the Biden administration had sent a team from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to New York City to assess the situation this week.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}New York City Mayor Adams held a press conference at City Hall Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023, warning the city will spend as much as $12 billion on managing the local migrant crisis by mid-2025. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Daily News via Getty Images)
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"New Yorkers did not create an international humanitarian crisis, but New Yorkers have been left to deal with this crisis almost entirely on our own," Adams said. "It has been fueled by those in Congress who stand in the way of real immigration reform, by governors who have used vulnerable asylum seekers as political pawns, by the indifference of leaders across the nation."
The comment seemed to take a veiled shot at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been bussing migrants from the border to New York City and other so-called sanctuary destinations, as well as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who last fall called out what he said was sanctuary policy hypocrisy in flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Migrants gather outside the Roosevelt Hotel, where dozens of recently arrived migrants have been camping out as they try to secure temporary housing, on Aug. 2, 2023, in New York City. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Adams said New York City projects to have more than 100,000 asylum seekers in its care by June 2025, driving projected spending to $6.1 billion in that fiscal year. The city is projected to spend more than $12 billion in the next three fiscal years, so an additional $7 billion needs to be added to the budget, he said.
New projections show New York City having to spend nearly $5 billion on this crisis in the current fiscal year. Adams said that's up from the $1.4 billion spent last fiscal year.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}For each family seeking asylum, Adams said the city spends an average of $383 per night to provide shelter, food, medical care and social services. With more than 57,300 individuals currently in the shelter system on an average night, that amounts to $9.8 million a day, almost $300 million a month, and nearly $3.6 billion a year, the mayor said.