Nearly half of hotel rooms in New York City today are filled with newly arrived border crossers and illegal aliens, living rent-free at the expense of local taxpayers, Mayor Eric Adams (D) says.

Since the spring of last year, nearly 70,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in the sanctuary city of New York City — many bused from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott (R). The figure represents a fraction of the millions of border crossers and illegal aliens who have been released into the United States interior or successfully crossed the border.

For months, Adams has been giving out lucrative contracts to the city’s powerful real estate industry which is housing tens of thousands of migrants in hotels. Most recently, for example, New Yorkers are set to foot an annual $75 million bill to put up border crossers and illegal aliens in Manhattan’s iconic Roosevelt Hotel.

This week, Adams said nearly half of the city’s hotel rooms are now filled with border crossers and illegal aliens, calling waves of illegal immigration an “onslaught” that officials are struggling to deal with and demanding President Joe Biden spread out new arrivals to towns and cities across the U.S.

“Almost 50 percent of those hotel rooms are taken up by migrant asylum seekers that we are paying for,” Adams said. “So instead of monies coming from people who are visiting us and spending in our tourism, in our Broadway plays, instead of them using those hotels, we are using those hotels.”

Adams noted that the cost of illegal immigration to New Yorkers, who are paying about $5 million every day to deal with the issue, will far exceed $4.3 billion when lost tourism money is factored in.

“When I take a hotel offline and use it for migrants, then we are not getting those residual impacts,” Adams said. So there’s the $4.3 [billion], which is going to be higher, I believe.”

Last week, Adams said 4,200 border crossers and illegal aliens arrived in New York City with more than 900 arriving in a single day. In total, he said the city is having 13 to 15 migrant buses arrive every day.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.