According to a feature in the New York Times, some critics call the management of New York City Mayor Eric Adams of the migrant crisis chaotic and have cast doubt over his leadership.
A Tuesday headline in The Times read, “Chaos, fury, mistakes: 600 days inside New York’s migrant crisis.” The Times interviewed local officials and human rights advocates on handling the migrant crisis in the city.
In May, Adams announced the city had received more than 70,000 migrants into the city. For months, Adams, one of America’s most recognizable mayors, has told residents of NYC the migrant crisis will continue to worsen amid a budget shortfall and cause suffering for both migrants and constituents.
Adams said the city has already spent over $1 billion to address the migrant crisis and is projected to require over $4 billion in funding.
Steven Neuhaus, the GOP executive from Orange County, told The Times Mayor Adams sent two buses of migrants to his county without making good on the promise to contact him before proceeding.
“I never heard anything back,” said Neuhaus. “Soon, two buses of migrants, with New York City police escorts, arrived at an Orange County hotel,” reported The Times.
Other upstate New York officials also complained that Adams didn’t give them “adequate warning” before sending busloads of migrants upstate.
“It angered everybody,” said Albany County executive, Daniel McCoy, to The Times.
Some officials, including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, have directly opposed Adams’ actions, restricting “the mayor’s emergency power to contract for migrant services without review.”
According to The Times, Lander reported, “His spokeswoman pointed to ‘extensive failures’ by the city.”
Power Malu, a volunteer aid group executive, said the scenes were “fabricated chaos.”
Some migrants choose to “sleep on the sidewalk outside an office to hold their place in line” for housing, with others getting into outright “[s]hoving matches.”
The overcrowding and confusion of shelters in New York City and across the state comes. At the same time, families of migrants and advocates protested Adams’ policies for a 60-day limit for stays in shelters, according to the Associated Press.
NYC schools have also been inundated
When school began again after the summer break, thousands of migrant children enrolled in the New York City Public School system.
A surge of asylum-seeking students enrolled, and families and the Department of Education tried to prepare for the influx. This is also a reality that other cities nationwide face as they look to procure funds and find space, and teachers try to manage the increase in students.
To deal with the delicate scenario, schools in NYC have added $110 million to the budget. However, services are continuing to be stretched to the limit.
According to New York State law, all children between the ages of 5 and 21 are entitled to public education. Students are entitled to all school services, including free breakfast and lunch, educational services, and transportation, even if the family is undocumented.
“The students are the future of the New York City system, and it is critical that we support them,” said NY Immigration Coalition’s Liza Schwartzwald.
