New York City Mayor Eric Adams issued an executive order on Wednesday, December 27th, targeting charter buses transporting migrants, mandating a 32-hour advance notification before they arrived in the city.
The directive also confines drop-off hours to a daily window from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and designates a sole location on West 41st Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan.
Mayor Adams also warned that non-compliance could lead to serious legal consequences, including misdemeanors, fines, and the possibility of impounding the buses.
Adams, during a virtual press conference alongside Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, stated, “We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning any hour of day and night.”
The mayor added, “This not only prevents us from providing assistance [in an] orderly way, [but it also] puts those who have already suffered so much in danger.”
Adams’s recent effort to address the city’s migrant crisis draws inspiration from Chicago, where Mayor Johnson’s administration initiated legal action against charter bus companies earlier this month.
The city directive is a response to a record influx of migrants, highlighted by the arrival of 14 buses in a single day at New York City’s intake center, an unprecedented number, according to Mayor Adams.
The surge has been linked to policies of Republican governors like Texas’ Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who have been sending migrants from the southern United States border to Democratic-majority cities.
Since April 2022, Texas has bused over 80,000 people from border cities to six destinations, including Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles.
On Tuesday, December 26, Mayor Adams told reporters, “Governor Abbott has made it clear he wants to destabilize cities and send thousands of migrant and asylum seekers here to the city.”
Besides those bused in, many migrants have arrived in the northeast U.S. independently or through social service organizations.
New York City has witnessed over 160,000 migrants entering its shelter system in the past year, straining local resources.
Mayor Adams has been vocal about the federal government’s inadequate response to this crisis. He disclosed that the city has already expended over $1 billion in managing the migrant situation and anticipates a need for an additional $4 billion.
In the joint briefing, the mayors emphasized the necessity for more federal aid, a cohesive federal resettlement plan for migrants, and quicker work authorization processes.
Mayor Adams encapsulated the situation in a tweet, “The asylum seeker crisis is a national crisis that needs a national solution.”
