Mayor Eric Adams, and a team of City Hall employees, traveled to El Paso over the January 14th weekend. Mayor Adams traveled to the Texas city with the intention of building relations with Mayor Oscar Leeser, discussing the matter of migrant asylum seekers, and their challenges within the United States. The trip proved to be an opportunity for Mayor Adams to voice his frustrations, as he spoke to members of the press present in El Paso on January 15th.
Mayor Adams said that while the arrival of migrants in places such as El Paso had seemingly slowed down, New York City was receiving a consistent number of asylum-seeking migrants. “The pause we’re seeing directly here in El Paso is not the pause we are seeing in New York. Last week we received 3,100. A week and a half ago we received 3,100 migrant asylum seekers and in one day, over 800, close to 840 asylum migrant seekers in one day. That is a record in our city. It clearly states that even while this conversation is taking place across the country on what is going to happen with the Supreme Court’s ruling and decision, it is still impacting New York City,” Adams said.
Mayor Adams Calls for Assistance from Federal Government and FEMA
Mayor Adams pointed out how challenging the arrival of immigrants was to the various cities in the U.S. “Second, no city deserves this. El Paso does not deserve this. Chicago, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, no city deserves what is happening. This is a beautiful city and what has happened over the last few months undermines this city and what is happening in Chicago right now, in New York and Houston and Los Angeles and Washington, our cities are being undermined and we don’t deserve this. Migrants don’t deserve this and the people who live in the cities don’t deserve this. We expect more from our national leaders to address this issue in a real way,” Mayor Adams said, as he firmly accused the federal government of not doing enough to assist the major cities affected by the movement of asylum-seeking migrants. He went to call for FEMA to play a more active role as he labeled the matter a ‘national crisis.’
Mayor Adams said that he had been forging relationships with the mayors of the above-mentioned cities in an effort to find solutions. Washington, D.C., his destination this week, is where he will be speaking to the American Conference of Mayors and the African Mayors Association. He said he hoped to find a solution to the matter.
Criticism of Trip
Mayor Adams’ trip to El Paso was criticized by New York City’s Comptroller Brad Lander, who publicly expressed his opinion on Twitter. Lander said he thought there were better ways of doing things rather than the approach taken by Mayor Adams. “There are many ways to demand the help we need from Washington & Albany. But the Mayor’s trip to Texas does little to deliver the $$ NYC needs to provide shelter & services. Instead, it risks reinforcing a harmful narrative that new immigrants themselves are a problem,” he wrote. Lander further shared what he felt were solutions for dealing with the situation and the positives that come with asylum-seeking migrants. Mayor Adams’ Press Secretary Fabien Levy responded to Lander.
“Would love if more elected officials joined @NYCMayor’s calls for federal and state support instead of attacking the one person who has actually provided shelter, food, education, health care, legal support, and more to 40,000+ asylum seekers who arrived in our city,” he replied on Lander’s tweet. This interaction occurred after Levy had previously called out Lander for not tweeting from the official New York City Comptroller Twitter account.
Mayor Adams has repeatedly called for federal assistance, as previously reported by LittleAfrica News. He now says it would take $2 billion to adequately help asylum-seeking migrants.
