New York City is estimated to have spent more than $5 billion on the migrant crisis over the past two years, an amount that is expected to double by 2025.
Paying at least 36,939 households an average of $352 a night, the city expects to spend $4.75 billion to provide shelter, food, health care and education to the influx of migrants in fiscal year 2025, according to the latest projections from the city’s online asylum seeker funding tracker. The city has budgeted $3.76 billion for fiscal year 2024 to combat the migrant crisis.
For fiscal years 2023 and 2024 combined, the city has spent $4.88 billion on the immigration crisis.
Based on current spending rates, New York Post It has been reported that New York City has likely spent more than $112 million on the migrant crisis since the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, meaning the cost of the crisis will soon exceed $5 billion, if not more than $5 billion already. This is roughly equivalent to the NYPD’s total budget of $5.8 billion for fiscal year 2025.
The NYPD has increased spending on the migrant crisis from $1 million in fiscal 2023 to $20 million in fiscal 2024, as police are increasingly being dispatched to quell illegal activity at the city’s overcrowded migrant centers, including the Randalls Island migrant center where migrants who have reached the limit of their stay have set up camp nearby.
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Earlier this week, a man was stabbed at one of the campsites, and two weeks ago a shooting left a woman dead and two others injured.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he expects the cost of the migrant crisis to reach $10 billion over the three years ending June 30, 2025.
Migrants wait to register outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. City officials said the number of arriving migrants has fallen from a peak of 4,000 weekly to about 700 last week. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
This week, the New York City Department of Homeless Services announced two new contracts totaling $40 million with contractors to provide services to migrants in hotels requisitioned as emergency shelters.
At the peak of the crisis, the city was admitting an average of 4,000 migrants per week. But last week, between Aug. 5 and 11, the number of new immigrants the city was admitting fell to just over 700.
Overall, an estimated 212,000 migrants have been processed through the city’s system so far. An estimated 63,900 migrants were in the city’s custody as of Tuesday.
“So I believe we’re going to start to feel relieved and we’re going to have to pray,” Gov. Adams said at a press conference Tuesday.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams projects the cost of the migrant crisis will exceed $10 billion by the end of the 2025 fiscal year. (Lev Ladin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Asked if he thought the worst was over, Adams replied: “It depends. Hopefully the worst is over, but we’re not out of the woods yet.”
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According to the New York Post, representatives at City Hall said the Adams administration’s response has reduced the cost of the migrant crisis by more than $2 billion.
“I want to be very clear on that point: We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said. “We still have to deal with the small number of violent gang members that are in this city, and we have to monitor them and be able to move people out of these shelter-like environments.”
On Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, migrants were forced to wait on the streets while waiting to register at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
Adams also cited an incident this week in which a migrant allegedly raped a woman at knifepoint near a popular beach promenade in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The mayor argued that the suspect had never been in a city shelter and said local law prevented city officials from coordinating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“You know, I’m not happy about that, and I think he’s a prime example of what’s wrong with not making adjustments. He definitely shouldn’t be on our streets,” Adams said. “The few immigrants that are on our streets should be held accountable if they break the law.”
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“First of all, this is not a New York City issue, this is not a United States issue. This is a global issue,” Camille Joseph Burlack, Mayor Adams’ chief of staff, also told reporters about the migrant crisis. “We’ve had the opportunity to speak with other cities that are expecting and experiencing migration, and we expect that with the confluence of war, climate change and all sorts of other issues, migration will continue.”
