Report: Eric Adams Plans to Use Taxpayer Funds to Send Migrants to College

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) plans to send some asylum-seeking migrants to college for a year using taxpayer funds, according to a report. 

On Tuesday, Adams unveiled his plans to establish the Office of Asylum Seekers Operations (OASO) in New York City. The office will “focus on resettlement and legal services, as well as a new 24/7 arrival center for asylum seekers,” per a press release. 

The New York Post reported Friday that the OASA would oversee a pilot program, providing educational services and room and board, to up to 100 migrants for a year. They will attend SUNY Sullivan Community College and The Center for Discovery, a special education entity in Sullivan County.

“By spending New Yorkers’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars on college classes for migrants, he is incentivizing and rewarding illegal immigration simply to export the crisis of Democrats’ own making out of New York City,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) told the Post.

The program could run taxpayers $1.2 million, the Post estimates, based on SUNY Sulivan Community College tuition rates for two semesters. However, the city has not disclosed the actual cost. 

Since April 2021, some 50,000 migrants have arrived in the Democrat-run sanctuary city, with more than 30,000 still in the city’s care. Tens of thousands of migrants have lodged at one of 85 Big Apple hotels on the taxpayers’ dime, and landlords are raking in the benefits, as Breitbart News reported. 

Adams announced late last month that the Wingate in Long Island City, which runs tourists $600 a night, was to make 144 rooms available for migrants. Adam’s office has confirmed that taxpayers are footing the bill — about $5 million daily — to subsidize the migrants. 

“New Yorkers know that the asylum seeker of today is the citizen, the leader, and the innovator of tomorrow, and I’m proud that New York City is leading the way, turning a crisis into an opportunity for progress for the entire country,” Adams declared in a statement announcing the OASA. 

“New York City is trying to spread the burden throughout the state,” State Sen. George Borrello (R) told the Post. “Adams has an accomplice with Gov. Kathy Hochul [D]. They are basically covering for Biden’s failure to control the southern border.”

In January, Adams implored President Joe Biden to “fairly distribute” immigrants across all U.S. cities and towns while speaking at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. His comments included “six main points,” as Breitbart News noted: 

 A dedicated point-person whose sole focus is overseeing and coordinating our national asylum seeker response, a decompression strategy at the border that establishes a plan for each migrant’s arrival — and creates a system to fairly distribute newcomers regionally, congressional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to implement that strategy in the places of greatest need, expedited right to work options for asylum seekers who are allowed to enter the country, congressional legislation that provides a clear pathway to residency or citizenship for those who enter this country legally, and nationwide leadership that takes an all-hands-on-deck approach by bringing together nonprofits, the faith-based community, and the private sector, alongside state and local government to meet this challenge. [Emphasis added]

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated 5.5 million migrants illegally crossed the United States’ southern border under Biden’s watch in Fiscal Years 2021 and 2022.