New York City taxpayers may spend $12 billion on waves of border crossers and illegal aliens arriving in the city daily, triple the cost previously projected by Mayor Eric Adams (D).
On Wednesday, Adams announced that nearly 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York City since the spring of last year — about 18 times the population of Saratoga, New York.
Close to 60,000 of those migrants remain living off city taxpayers.
The cost over the next three years, Adams said, will hit $12 billion for New Yorkers, who are already some of the most tax-burdened Americans in the United States. To house, feed, and care for migrants, New Yorkers will spend $3.6 billion this fiscal year, $4.7 billion in Fiscal Year 2024, and $6.1 billion in Fiscal Year 2025.
“Since last year, nearly 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in our city asking for shelter, and we are past our breaking point,” Adams said in a statement:
New York City has been left to pick up the pieces of a broken immigration system — one that is projected to cost our city $12 billion over the course of three fiscal years without policy changes and further support from the state and federal governments. Our compassion may be limitless, but our resources are not. This is the budgetary reality we are facing if we don’t get the additional support we need. [Emphasis added]
Previously, Adams’ office had projected illegal immigration to New York City would cost taxpayers about $4.2 billion, as the city spends at least $8 million every day to house, feed, and care for migrants.
Adams noted the situation outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, which the city has transformed into a luxury migrant camp. In recent days, border crossers and illegal aliens — primarily from Burkina Faso — slept on the sidewalks outside the hotel.
Police officers take security measures outside the Roosevelt Hotel as asylum seekers set up camp, waiting for placement inside the shelter, after the Manhattan relief center is at full capacity in New York City, New York, on August 2, 2023. (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Migrants wait outside the Roosevelt Hotel, hoping for a place to stay on August 2, 2023, in New York City, New York. (Leonardo Munoz/VIEWpress)
Hundreds of migrants sleep in line early on August 1, 2023, for placement at the Roosevelt Hotel intake center in New York City, New York. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
Police officers take security measures outside the Roosevelt Hotel as asylum seekers set up camp, waiting for placement inside the shelter, after the Manhattan relief center is at full capacity in New York City, New York, on August 2, 2023. (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
WATCH: Migrants Waiting for Entry to Roosevelt Hotel
While Adams pleads with President Joe Biden for the federal government to effectively bail New York City out over the illegal immigration surge, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) recently said she is “livid” with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Biden for approving roughly $105 million to go to the city that was meant for border communities.
“The fact that a yeoman’s amount of this money went to New York City, in my opinion, is wrong because they are not a border state, and they are not facing the kind of pressure that we are facing here,” Sinema said. “So when I hear from other parts of the country say, ‘Oh, it’s hard. Our shelters are overwhelmed’ — yeah, come live a day in the life of Yuma, Somerton, or San Luis. Just one day.”
To deal with the number of migrants flooding onto New York City sidewalks, Adams’ office will soon open a mega-shelter on Randall’s Island, which will see over 10,000 hours of services and recreation time meant for New Yorkers canceled.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.