Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams seems to continue backing away from his earlier support for the Big Apple’s status as a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants.
"We should protect our immigrants." Period.
Yes, New York City will remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration. #EricOnNBC
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) October 20, 2021
After bemoaning the arrival of migrants at the behest of border-state leaders like GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Adams decided to relocate many of those individuals to other parts of New York, claiming that they constituted an unsustainable strain on the city’s resources.
His complaints about the situation continued on Wednesday when he claimed that nearly half of all the city’s hotel rooms were being used to provide shelter to undocumented immigrants.
“Think about that,” Adams said. “I’m not sure what it’s going to take before people hear what I am saying.”
Of course, Republicans have long been sounding the alarm about President Joe Biden’s disastrous immigration policy, which has resulted in a record number of migrants illegally crossing the southern border into the U.S.
Nevertheless, Adams attempted to portray his city’s problems as unique, asserting: “New York City is the hotel capital. We’re the hotel capital — tourism, visitors, sporting events, graduations. It’s a major economic engine for us. Almost 50% of those hotel rooms are being taken up by migrant asylum seekers.”
That estimate is almost certainly much higher than the reality, as New York City Councilwoman Diana Ayala explained.
“It would be impossible,” she said. “The math doesn’t add up.”
While the city has received an estimated 65,000 migrants over the course of the past several months, a large number of them have been housed in shelters and facilities other than hotels.
Nevertheless, there have been reports that even swanky hotels were being used to provide free housing to undocumented immigrants, causing security problems and property damage in the process.
Row NYC employee Felipe Rodriguez detailed the issues he has seen since migrants began to take over the hotel.
Describing it as “total chaos” and a “free-for-all,” he added: “There’s no accountability. The city is so-called running the program [and] allows these people to destroy these rooms. There is no daily supervision to show these people that … you can’t destroy your hotel. You are only there temporarily. This is not your home.”
