Mayor Eric Adams abruptly canceled a trip to the southern border he had planned for this weekend, citing “security concerns” in the Mexican city he was scheduled to visit.
“As Lent draws to a close, our team is excited to stand alongside leaders of faith and humanitarianism who have dedicated their lives to serving the poorest among us. “We were eager to discuss our work in New York City and explore new ways to work together, along with city leaders across the country,” Mayor Spokesperson Amaris Cockfield said Saturday. said in a statement.
“However, due to safety concerns in one of the cities in Mexico designated by the U.S. State Department, we have decided to suspend this visit,” Cockfield said.
The mayor’s office did not immediately provide information on which cities had safety concerns.
Ms. Adams was invited to travel south to Mexico by Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in San Juan.
He announced a visit to the Texas-Mexico border on Thursday, shortly after dozens of migrants breached the border wall in El Paso, Texas.
The trip south would have been his second visit to the Lone Star State since the immigration crisis began two years ago.
It would also have marked City Hall’s latest attempt to draw national attention to the financial burden the influx of immigrants places on the Big Apple and pressure the Biden administration to step up.
Adams last canceled a trip in November, shortly after learning that the FBI had raided the home of his fundraising chief in Brooklyn as part of an ongoing investigation into his 2021 mayoral campaign. He canceled a meeting with White House officials in Washington, D.C., about the crisis.
Nearly 185,000 immigrants have arrived in the Big Apple since spring 2022, and the city is caring for about 65,000 immigrants.
The city has already spent more than $4 billion responding to the immigration crisis, and Adams predicts that cost will soar to $12 billion by the end of fiscal year 2025.
