Adams calls for feds to step up amid migrant crisis

Mayor Eric Adams was joined by members of his administration in calling on the federal government to provide more aid to help the city’s asylum seeker crisis on April 19, 2023. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office

By Jacob Kaye

A bewildered Mayor Eric Adams pleaded with the president to do more to ease the city’s efforts to aid the tens of thousands asylum seekers who have come to the five boroughs in the past year.

Speaking from City Hall on Wednesday, Adams said the city’s coffers can only handle so many more asylum seekers before city services will be affected, and demanded that both President Joe Biden and Governor Kathy Hohcul send more cash to the city to fund its efforts to house, feed and provide other services to the over 50,000 migrants now living in New York City.

But in addition to the money, Adams demanded Wednesday that Biden issue an executive order that would allow asylum seekers to obtain legal work quicker than they currently can. According to Adams and other city officials who have spoken with migrants and service providers, asylum seekers most frequently ask how they can go about getting a job to provide for their families, something they are currently unable to do in the first several months after arriving in the U.S..

“A national problem dropped on the lap of a city,” Adams said. “Washington, it is time to respond. Enough is enough. New Yorkers deserve better from our national government, they deserve better.”

Over 55,000 migrants have arrived to New York City in the past year, and around 34,600 are currently being housed by the city. The city has opened a little over 100 shelters and over half a dozen Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers.

The effort has thus far cost the city a little over $800,000 and is expected to surpass $1 billion before the end of the fiscal year. By the end of the following fiscal year, the Adams administration said they expect the cost to surpass $4 billion.

On Wednesday, the city’s budget director, Jacques Jiha, said the problem was simple – the funds are just not there.

“No municipality can absorb this kind of cost without cracking,” Jiha said. “We didn't have this in our budget and then all of a sudden, we have to come up with $4 billion.”

“This is a huge burden on this city,” Jiha added.

Adams accused the federal government of leaving the city out to dry by not providing more funds to meet the demands of the crisis. In talks with members of the president’s staff, Adams said that while he’s been given sympathies, he’s yet to secure a cash commitment.

“Their basic response is, ‘We understand what you're going through, we understand the difficulties,’ but I don't need you to understand, I need help,” Adams said.

“This is really potentially the beginning of our problem,” he added. “This is unimaginable how this can destabilize our city – all the work that we've done to recover our city, this could destabilize New York City.”

Adams’ remarks on Wednesday come amid a budget fight, with the City Council condemning a number of cuts the mayor has proposed. Adams has blamed the cuts on the migrant crisis, an explanation council leadership has largely rejected.

In a statement on Wednesday, City Comptroller Brad Lander said that the city’s spending on the migrant crisis hasn’t been the most economical.

“The city could cut down on the costs of opening new emergency shelters by scaling up efforts to enable homeless New Yorkers to move from shelter into permanent housing,” Lander said. “We need an all-hands-on-deck approach to help new arrivals file their asylum applications before the one year deadline, so that they can receive work authorization as soon as possible.”’

“Right now, we are spending over 99 percent of our resources on temporary shelter measures, and less than 1 percent towards helping new arrivals build new lives that will contribute to our city’s cultural and economic vitality,” he added.

But despite his criticism of the city’s own efforts, Lander reiterated Adams’ call for federal and state help.

“Washington and Albany absolutely must step up to pay their share for the shelter and services that NYC is providing for asylum seekers,” Lander said. “A serious commitment in the state budget to pay the full one-third of the costs that the governor promised has yet to materialize. Washington needs to accelerate the processing of work authorization, expand Temporary Protected Status and other legal pathways, and dole out the funding due to New York City and other municipalities that pay to house asylum seekers.”

Getting to work

Asylum seekers are unable to obtain legal work without first being granted special authorization to do so. Applying for and being granted that authorization could take months.

Queens City Councilmember Julie Won, whose district has welcomed more asylum seekers than any other district in the World’s Borough, said more than any other request, migrants want to work.

“People didn't come here to hang out – people came here to support their families back home, or just for a brighter future and opportunities for their children for themselves,” Won told the Eagle on Wednesday.

Last year, 26-year-old John Ortega was found dead inside the room he was staying in inside a Long Island City shelter for migrants. Ortega, who had come to the U.S. with his young family from Venezuela, was one of the first asylum seekers to arrive to the city as part of the wave.

Ortega had been attempting for months to secure work. His wife said at the time that the pressures to provide for his family became too much, and after experiencing a trouble with his vehicle, he committed suicide.

“They have committed suicide because they are so desperate right now,” Won said. “The city, our hands are tied, we need our federal government to provide work authorization.”

Won has had her own issues with the ways the Adams administration has handled the crisis thus far. Over two dozen shelters have been opened by administration in her district in the past year, and she’s rarely, if ever, gotten much of a heads up. Won has also been vocal about the services, particularly the food, which has been inedible in some cases, that have been given to the migrants by the city.

But nonetheless, she joined Adams in calling on the state and federal governments to take the crisis as seriously as some of the city’s leaders.

“We are dependent on the feds and the state to help us serve the people of our city and both the feds and the state are not doing their share in making sure that these people are taken care of,” Won said.

The Western Queens lawmaker also joined the mayor in calling out some of her council colleagues, who she said may not fully understand the dire nature of the migrant crisis because they have so few shelters within their districts. A bulk of Queens’ shelters have been opened in districts represented by Won, Speaker Adrienne Adams and City Councilmember Nantasha Williams, and most of those shelters have been opened in low-income, Black and brown majority neighborhoods within those districts.

“I think it's clear that [the mayor] feels alone in this fight,” Won said. “Elected officials from all across the board, I think we could talk about it more and make it clear to our state and federal partners of how dire the needs are.”

“If you only have one or two shelters, you're not feeling the heat of schools calling you because children have rapid weight loss and malnutrition, schools are not calling you because kids can't do laundry properly or that they don't have winter shoes or coats and people are not calling you because somebody committed suicide in the shelter,” Won added. “When you don't feel the sense of urgency, with so much of what's going on in the city, I'm not surprised that my colleagues are not screaming and yelling about it.”