(The Center Square) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams is set to return from a four-day trip to Latin America, where he sought to dissuade migrants from traveling to the United States to criticism from both sides of the political aisle.
Adams’ sojourn took him through Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia, including the Darién Gap, a rainforest used by thousands of mostly South American migrants to travel to the U.S. He said the focus of his media blitz trip was to counter a narrative being spread by smugglers and on social media that the Big Apple is “the promised land.”
“My trip here is to speak directly to the people of all the countries that are migrating: There is no more room in New York,” Adams, a Democrat, said Thursday during a briefing with reporters in Mexico. “Our hearts are endless, but our resources are not.”
New York City is struggling amid a surge of 116,000 migrants who have arrived in the city over the past year. This has overwhelmed homeless shelters, drained municipal resources, and prompted proposed cuts in the city’s budget. More than 60,000 are being cared for by the city, costing more than $1.2 billion to date, Adams says.
Last week, the Adams administration asked a state judge to end a decades-old right-to-shelter mandate requiring New York to provide temporary housing to anyone who needs one. Adams says the city has no shelter for thousands of migrants who continue to arrive in the city every day.
Republican governors have been busing tens of thousands of migrants to New York City, Chicago and other “sanctuary” jurisdictions in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of the immigration crisis.
Adams, who has warned that the crisis will “destroy New York City,” has emerged as the chief Democratic critic of the Biden administration’s response to the migrant surge, calling for more federal resources and a “decompression strategy” along the southern border.
But Adams’ Latin American trip has drawn criticism back home, including fellow Democrats, with many describing it as a political stunt.
City Council Member Alexa Avilés, a Democrat, criticized Adams’ visit to Latin America for lacking solutions to the roots of immigration.
“We don’t need a tourist person to go to the Darién water gap who thinks he’s going to convince individuals not to come to New York City,” she posted on social media. “It’s absurd.”
Meanwhile, the New York Immigration Coalition and other advocacy groups have criticized Adams’ trip as a “pointless” waste of taxpayer money, despite claims by Adams that he is mostly paying his own way.
“It’s outrageous that Mayor Adams has slashed the budget of nearly every city agency, with plans for additional cuts, while scapegoating immigrants for his own mismanagement of the city’s funds – and now is needlessly spending taxpayer dollars on a pointless international trip,” Murad Awawdeh, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
“Mayor Adams has no authority to affect any international policy changes, making this travel even more ridiculous.”
