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By Bernadette Hogan, Steven Nelson and Jesse ONeill

April 19, 2023 | 12:56pm

Mayor Eric Adams blasted President Biden on Wednesday, saying the White House had turned its back on the Big Apple and left the city to handle the arrival of thousands of migrants on its own a situation Hizzoner said had triggered one of the largest humanitarian crises that this city has ever experienced.

The national government has turned its back on New York City, said Adams, blaming a projected $4.2 billion budget shortfall on the feds inaction. Every service in this city is going to be impacted by the asylum seeker crisis.

This is in the lap of the president of the United States! The president of the United States can give us the ability to allow people to work.This is in the lap of the executive branch of the United States of America, the mayor added, claiming that most migrants had come to New York to work and support themselves but are prohibited from doing so legally for the first six months of their stay.

More than 55,000 foreigners claiming to be seeking refuge from persecution and violence have arrived in NYC over the past year.

Some 200 asylum seekers arrive in the city every day, and it costs $380 per day per household to provide them with food and shelter, according to City Hall.

Most of the migrants, about 34,600 of them, are being put up in taxpayer-funded emergency shelters mostly hotels with thousands more dropped off at eight Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers (HERRCs).

Over 50,000 people come to the city of New York seeking assistance and we are told, You will not allow them to work, you have to give them food, clothing if they need, give them the basic services that they need, youre supposed to make sure they have three meals a day, make sure that all the children are educated and while youre doing that, New York City, were not going to give you anything in return,' Adams complained.

The situation will only become more costly and dire next month, when the Title 42 health policy is set to expire, the mayor said. The pandemic-era emergency measure that was continued by the Biden administration let officials quickly expel millions of asylum seekers on public health grounds.

Thousands of people are waiting to come across the border and potentially come to New York City, Adams warned. So 52,000 can jump to 100,000, if we dont get this under control. It does this great city a disservice and were calling on the Biden-Harris administration, the United States Department of Homeland Security, they must use all tools that are available to resolve this issue.

The mayor later claimed that in some ways, the city was a victim of its own success because it had paid for sheltering migrants without raising taxes or laying off municipal workers. However, Adams recently ordered city agencies to slash $4 billion from their budgets over the next four years to pay for the massive humanitarian effort.

The money god just doesnt appear and drop it in front of us, he said. As it currently stands, our national government has abandoned the city and their action or inaction could undermine this city. Everything weve fought for is in jeopardy if we dont get this right.

Gotham is set to receive about $1 billion from Albany to mitigate migrant costs in addition to a still-to-be-determined share of an $800 million relief package approved by federal lawmakers.

When asked what DC has said in response to his repeated requests for cash, Adams answered: We constantly hear, We understand your pain.

I dont need to understand, I need help, he implored. We need help from the federal government.

The White House responded by attempting to deflect criticism for insufficient funding onto fiscally conservative House Republicans, even though Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress until January.

Were proud of our partnership with Mayor Adams and the significant investments weve made in New York City through the Presidents historic legislative accomplishments, including the American Rescue Plan and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a White House official said.

Weve invested historic funds to improve the citys infrastructure, including its iconic bridges, tunnels, and airports. We quickly worked to get vaccines out to New Yorkers and provided the city resources to safely re-open its schools. FEMA is also providing assistance to support the city as it receives migrants and will announce additional funding for receiving cities like New York City in the coming weeks, but we need Congress to provide the funds and resources weve requested to fix our long-broken immigration system.

Adams was set to go to Washington on Friday for the African American Mayors Association conference and to meet with White House officials about the migrant crisis.

Meanwhile, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams joined members of New Yorks congressional delegation and immigration activists at the Capitol on Wednesday to demand federal action on immigration reform and migrant funding.

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Adams blames $4.2B budget shortfall on Biden admin's migrant crisis inaction - New York Post

With Mayor Eric Adams calls for the White House to assist the city with the migrant crisis falling on deaf ears, he declared on Wednesday that the national government has turned its back on New York City.

Adams made the pronouncement perhaps his sharpest rebuke of President Biden to date as he called on the White House to pursue pathways for granting work authorizations to the citys over 55,000 recently arrived migrants who are seeking to work during a Wednesday morning news conference at City Hall. He also decried the mounting cost of the crisis, which his budget director now estimates will reach $4.3 billion over the current and next fiscal years, while emphasizing its been the driving force behind his most recent round of budget cuts.

Adams preliminary budget proposal for the coming fiscal year totaled $102.7 billion.

While getting financial assistance from the feds for the crisis seems nearly impossible with House Republicans controlling Congress purse strings, Adams said giving work authorizations to migrants falls squarely on Biden, as its something he can do without Congressional approval.

This is in the lap of the President of the United States. The President of the United States can give us the ability to allow people to work, the mayor said. Were calling [on] the Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris administration, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they must use all tools that are available to resolve this issue. We want them to ensure asylum seekers can start to work immediately. Fortunately, they can act with a stroke of a pen.

Adams said the feds can allow more migrants to work by following three main paths: re-designating and extending Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for migrants from several countries including Venezuela, Honduras and El Salvador; expanding access to humanitarian parole for newly arrived asylum seekers and those who are already in the country; and increasing the number of immigration workers who process TPS applications, so they can be reviewed more quickly.

Although many of the asylum seekers whove arrived here over the past 12 months are ready and willing to work, Adams said, Washington isnt allowing them to.

We have always said that the asylum seeker crisis is a national crisis that requires a coordinated response from the federal government, Adams said. It is why we need the federal government to take these necessary steps that would allow asylum seekers to support themselves and integrate into our communities. And we hear those who are saying Why arent they working? Well, this is why theyre not working, theyre not given the authorization to do so. And this is wrong.

According to Mayors Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Manuel Castro, not permitting migrants to seek legal employment forces them to work off the books. That could ultimately lead to them getting deported back to the countries they fled from in many cases to escape political violence.

Not giving the ability to someone to work legally, and be able to provide for themselves and for their families is cruel and inhumane, Castro said. You put asylum seekers in a desperate situation. If they work informally, they risk being deported, and [are] forced to return back to the dangerous places they are fleeing from. And for some, this means being separated from their families.

The mayor said Biden needs to move quickly on enacting these policies before Title 42, a pandemic-era rule the administration has used to limit the number of migrants flowing into the country, expires on May 11. When the rule lifts, he said, the number of asylum seekers flowing to the city could double.

If the feds continue to ignore the citys pleas for help, Adams said the influxs estimated $4.3 billion price tag could undermine progress it has made in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic by forcing his administration to further cut critical city services. The city has already spent $817 million on the crisis as of the end of last month.

The mayors budget director, Jacques Jiha, said the projected tab is a huge burden on the Big Apple and trimming agency budgets a process he referred to as finding efficiencies is the only way to manage it.

You can imagine, a year ago we didnt have this in our budget, and all of a sudden we have to come up with $4.3 billion, Jiha said.

So far, the only help the city is getting, Jiha said, is $1 billion proposed in Governor Kathy Hochuls executive budget for the coming fiscal year. However, its not yet clear if Albany will deliver on that money, considering the state budget is over two weeks late and negotiations have focused entirely on other issues. The Big Apple is also due to get some portion of an $800 million federal allocation for cities on the front lines of the crisis.

But, taken together, thats hardly enough to cover the estimated expense.

The city has to, at a minimum, come up with $3 billion, Jiha said. Were not raising taxes. So the only way we can manage this is to find efficiencies in other places in city government This is not cheap and folks have to understand, the money has to come from somewhere.

The mayor took aim at leaders of the City Council in particular for putting forth a budget proposal earlier this month that reversed many of his proposed agency budget cuts by utilizing what they say is $2.7 billion more in city revenue than what his office projected. He argues the council didnt factor the cost of the migrant crisis into their plan and released a false projection.

Did you notice that everyone that puts forward a report on balancing the budget, none of them talk about the asylum seekers, Adams said. All the proposals that people are putting in place, whats coming out of the City Council and other places, of how to balance the budget, its void of asylum seekers.

Yet City Council Finance Chair Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn), said that based on the councils projections the city has enough funds in its coffers to care for the asylum seekers without following through on the mayors cuts.

As Ive said, our citys compassion is limitless but our resources are finite, Brannan said in a statement to amNewYork Metro. We desperately need help from Albany and DC to cover asylee costs. Speaker [Adrienne Adams] and I have written to the president in support of the mayors call for emergency migrant funding.

The councils objective budget forecast and our desperate need for help from Albany and DC to cover asylee costs need not live in tension, he added.

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White House has turned its back on NYC in regard to migrant crisis: mayor - AMNY

Apr 19, 2023, 4:16pmUpdated 6h ago

By: News 12 Staff

Mayor Eric Adams and other city officials are asking for more federal assistance with the city's migrant crisis.

Over 55,000 asylum seekers have had some level of interaction with the city's shelter system, and New York City officials say they can't continue to deal with this crisis on their own.

Mayor Eric Adams, along with other city leaders, gathered at City Hall to call on President Joe Biden and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to reinstate temporary protected to status to migrants coming from Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, South Sudan, Sudan and Cameroon.

Adams is also requesting an expansion of humanitarian parole and a surge of U.S. citizenship and immigration services. They say these steps taken by the executive branch will authorize these asylum seekers to become employed.

Adams thanked Public Advocate Jumaane Williams for having his boots on the ground in the nation's capital asking what they plan on doing to help with the asylum seekers.

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Mayor Adams calls on federal government for more assistance with NYC's migrant crisis - News 12 Brooklyn

JUAREZ, Chihuahua (KVIA) -- Chihuahua State Governor Maru Campos met with local and state officials in Juarez to discuss the current migrant situation. She asked the federal government to stop the migrant influx at Mexico's southern border.

"The immigration issue in Juarez has become a serious immigration crisis and according to the data we have and the events of these past days it will become even more serious," Campos said.

Migrants are still camping outside of the National Institute of Migration, living at abandoned buildings, and making their way to the Rio Grande around the streets of Juarez.

Governor Campos said more migrants and other people are still coming to Juarez via trains and other means of transportation.

According to Campos, religious organizations and other migrant advocates calculate, there are around 35,000 migrants stuck in Juarez waiting to cross to the U.S.

The governor also mentioned they have reports of over one thousand migrants crossing daily to the U.S. that are eventually sent back to Mexico through different borders and ports of entry.

Her statement comes after multiple conflicts and other violent situations reported in Juarez involving migrants in the past weeks.

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The route to Europe via Belarus may be one of the safest, but its all relative. Since the beginning of this year, as many as ten bodies of dead migrants have been found in the forests near the border on the Polish side, bringing the total known to have died since the crisis began in 2021 to 40.

There are many more bodies being found in this period than before, confirmed Palecka, adding that the Border Guard reported finding only four dead bodies throughout the whole of 2022.

But we, the activists, were always suspicious of the fact that only four bodies were found throughout the whole of last year. On the contrary, this is a rather unsettling fact; it only shows that the state of emergency imposed at the border for most of last year, which limited freedom of movement close to the border, meant less searches could be conducted, she said. It is very possible there are more dead bodies in the forest.

This concern is heightened by fact that the greatest burden of searching for missing migrants is being borne by activist groups such as the Volunteer Humanitarian Ambulance in Podlaskie (Podlaskie Ochotnicze Pogotowie Humanitarne) and Grupa Granica, which receive information about missing people from their families or friends, and go in search of them in the forests.

As Palecka explained, Grupa Granica has been able to track down about a third of the 300 people reported missing to them an impressive feat for a group made up largely of volunteers and NGO workers.

The Polish authorities themselves do not search for people missing in the forests, Palecka said, except when activists directly report an emergency to them, i.e. when they know of a migrant potentially stuck in a dangerous location, like a swamp. In such cases, drones are sent to spot the exact location and more specialised gear is used to pull them out.

Sometimes, the activists only find human remains. And even when a body is found, it is mostly the activists who try to identify the person and assist in the funeral arrangements.

Prosecutors are responsible for starting an investigation once a dead body is found in the forest, Palecka said. People should not be dying in the forest. So, if a body is found there, it means something bad has happened.

But in many cases these investigations are not pursued, the sociologist complained, pointing to a significant discrepancy between the number of deaths on the border officially acknowledged by the Border Guard and the number of dead bodies counted by activists and independent Polish media.

Efforts to identify the victims and give them proper burials are made more difficult by the fact that members of their families, who should normally come to identify the bodies, often cannot themselves get visas.

In some cases, the activists and families back home manage to raise the funds to send the bodies back home, but other times they dont and the victims are buried in Polish cemeteries, with the funeral broadcast via social media, which is tragic, she said.

As the advent of spring brings signs that the attempts by migrants to cross are intensifying, can the activists continue shouldering the burden of dealing with the human cost of keeping this border closed?

While the Polish authorities have gotten professionalised in conducting illegal mass pushbacks, we have also gotten more professionalised in providing humanitarian aid, Palecka claimed. We are more efficient, we are able to spot faster the most vulnerable people, and we have procedures in place to help them.

But there are also feelings of helplessness associated with doing this. When public opinion no longer seems interested in this border, even when four dead bodies are found in a single week, then there is a sense of loneliness, she said.

This interview is part of a series of articles on migration co-authored by BIRN and Gazeta Wyborcza. This article was published as part of the project re:framing Migrants in European Media supported by the European Commission and coordinated by the European Culture Foundation.

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Polish-Belarus Border: From Migration Crisis to 'Routinization' of ... - Balkan Insight