New York City Mayor Eric Adams seemed to criticize President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris when discussing the city's migrant crisis.
Biden in March 2021 put Harris in charge of the U.S. response to the influx of migrants at the southern border.
Adams was asked Tuesday what he wanted from the Biden administration to help the city deal with its migrant crisis.
"There needs to be an individual who is dedicated to do the decompression strategy for the federal government. Someone should be at these entry points: El Paso, Brownsville, Texas, and others, too, to organize a real decompression strategy across the entire country," Adams said during a news conference.
"One person should, we should be looking at — it is often stated that as the role of the VP has too much in her portfolio to be focused on just doing that decompression strategy. If not, the decompression strategy can't be New York City."
It was not clear whether Adams had more of an issue with Harris or with Biden for naming Harris "border czar."
"We'll let the mayor's comments from yesterday speak for themselves," Adams press secretary Fabien Levy told the New York Post on Wednesday.
One Post source aware of Adams' contacts with the White House said the mayor was annoyed with Harris.
"It's been frustrating to not have a point person on topic that's senior enough to make adjustments in response to the crisis on the ground. The main contact has been [the Department of] Homeland Security," the source told the Post.
Two of New York's Republican lawmakers in Washington took note of Adams' comments.
"It's Joe Biden's open borders policy that he's complaining about," said Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., state GOP chairman, the Post reported. "The fish rots from the head down, and this administration has proven they'll never get serious about securing our border whether it's hapless 'border czar' Kamala or anyone else."
Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., criticized Harris and Adams.
"The Biden administration has created the worst border crisis in our nation's history and the buck stops there," Tenney said, the Post reported. "The vice president has proven incompetent and lacks the leadership skills to combat this catastrophe that threatens the security of our taxpayers and legal residents daily."
Tenney blamed Adams for "pouring gasoline on the fire by accommodating illegal immigrants and begging for billions of dollars to feed, house, and care for them at the expense of the taxpayers of New York."
Adams also called for "real immigration reform" and said the White House "must come up with how they're going to distribute the $800 million" in migrant aid that was part of Biden's $1.7 trillion omnibus spending plan in December.
New York City has only been awarded less than $8 million of the $1 billion requested by Adams.
"That is taking far too long. We have to get that done. Let's get the money flowing," Adams said.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.