New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted by federal prosecutors on Wednesday, spent the latter part of his term fighting with the White House over the immigration crisis, and Hizzoner repeatedly accused Biden of neglecting New York.
“Aid is not coming,” Adams told reporters after meeting with Biden to discuss the crisis in December 2023. And since then, his comments about the White House have become increasingly pessimistic.
“The federal government has turned its back on New York City,” he said a few months later, adding that “every service in this city will be affected by the refugee crisis.”
The comments were just part of a lengthy tirade against the Biden administration from an increasingly frustrated Adams, who at one point called on New Yorkers to march to Washington, D.C., in protest at the influx of thousands of migrants into New York.
As of August, the city had spent at least $5.5 billion on the migrant crisis, including to house more than 250,000 immigrants from 2022 onward.
The crisis is expected to cost the city more than $12 billion through 2026, but as of July, calculations showed it was already hundreds of millions of dollars over budget at that point.
City officials estimate that this represents about 69% of the total cost of the migrant crisis, with the state expected to cover 30% and the federal government only 1%.
Adams called Washington's refusal to provide more funding “puzzling,” explaining that numerous meetings with the Biden administration had not produced any concrete commitments to increase aid.
“I'm perplexed, and I have a hard time understanding why, nearly 20 months later, we're still talking about this issue and it's sending ripples throughout the city,” Adams told Fox 5 in December.
“We've passed the breaking point,” Adams declared a few months later in August, but more than a year later the crisis shows no signs of abating.
For decades, the city has claimed “sanctuary city” status, meaning it doesn't cooperate with federal immigration authorities when fugitive immigrants are identified, but it was enacted into law under Adams' predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Migrants first began arriving, mainly from the southern border, about two years ago.
Some were being transported by bus at the behest of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who launched a campaign in the spring of 2022 to send migrants from his troubled state to cities he had declared safe havens.
But Adams was not happy with the move, accusing Abbott of “trying to hurt Black-owned cities” and using people as political pawns.
Months after Governor Abbott instituted bus transportation, Adams complained that both political parties were “doing nothing” to stop the crisis.
“The far right is doing the wrong thing. The far left is doing nothing,” he said in October 2022.
“I mean, the silence. I can't believe the silence I'm hearing.”
But the Biden administration has also been actively involved in funneling migrants to Gotham.
According to a Center for Immigration Studies investigation, as of spring 2024, about 37,000 of the city's migrants were being brought in by bus from Texas, while the Department of Homeland Security was bringing about 33,000 migrants into the city by plane without any coordination with city hall.
