New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged President Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency over the migrant crisis on Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported.
"We are facing an unprecedented state of emergency," Adams declared at a news conference. "The immigration system in this country is broken, it has been broken for decades."
The mayor added that "Today, New York City has been left to pick up the pieces. Since last year, nearly 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in our city asking for shelter," according to The Messenger News.
Adams said the city is spending an average of $383 a night on housing each migrant household, which is about $3.6 billion annually, and if the current rate of arrival of migrants continues, the Big Apple could spend as much as $12 billion on the crisis by the summer of 2025.
Adams stressed that "New Yorkers' compassion may be limitless, but our resources are not," as he urged Biden to help, since local and state resources are not sufficient to deal with the crisis.
On the day Adams spoke, more busloads of migrants arrived for processing at the city's Roosevelt Hotel, which has become the hotbed of the crisis, according to the Daily News, as hundreds were forced last week to sleep on the sidewalk in the heat as they waited to be handled by authorities.
The mayor also added that federal immigration policies must change, stating that the problem "has been fueled by those in Congress who stand in the way of real immigration reforms, by governors who have used vulnerable asylum seekers as their political pawns, and the indifference of leaders across the nation," The Messenger News reported.
Adams added that the federal government must adopt a "decompression strategy" at the southern border, in order to help other cities take their share of new arrivals.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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