Adams After Schools Had to Close to Shelter Migrants: ‘We’ve Done a Great Job,’ Don’t Blame Sanctuary Status

On Thursday’s broadcast of ABC’s “GMA3,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) stated that the city has “done a great job” handling the migrant surge and the problem “has nothing to do with sanctuary cities.” It’s because the migrants aren’t being spread across the nation. He also criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for “his intentionality of just placing people on buses, compelling them to leave the city.”

Adams said, “This has nothing to do with sanctuary cities. Migrants and asylum seekers are paroled into the [country]. They’re here legally. And so, when you have a national leader talking about [being a] sanctuary city is the reason we’re having this, it’s telling me she’s not knowledgeable on the real topic. The problem is, when you parole someone into a country, you should have a decompression strategy on a national level to spread it throughout the country and not target just certain cities.”

He added, “Cities should not be handling a national crisis of this magnitude. We’re getting an average — and just think of this number — there are weeks we get 4,000 migrants that come into our city. When you have anywhere from 2,500 to 4,000 coming in a week and you have to find housing, food, shelter, clothing, educating the children, health care, that’s not sustainable. It’s a $12 billion hole in the budget of our economy. It’s going to impact low-income New Yorkers and it’s going to impact every service in this city. And I said it last year, we’re going to start seeing the visualization of this crisis. We’ve done a great job, but we can’t continue to sustain this.”

Adams further stated that “We’ve reached out and tried to coordinate with just the mean-spiritedness of [Gov. Greg Abbott] who has his intentionality of just placing people on buses, compelling them to leave the city.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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