New York City Mayor Eric Adams traveled to the Texas border city of El Paso over the weekend to implore the federal government to provide additional funds and support to American cities receiving tens of thousands of migrants seeking refuge from economic crises and political tumult in Latin America.
During the trip, his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border as mayor, Adams said cities like New York and El Paso were on the “front lines” of an unprecedented migrant crisis that recently prompted the Biden administration to adopt a new strategy designed to discourage illegal border crossings.
“This is a national crisis and we need a national solution,” said Adams, a Democrat who issued an emergency declaration in October over the migrant arrivals in New York.
New York City, for its part, has also received tens of thousands of migrants in recent months who entered the U.S. along the southern border. Some of them traveled to the city with the help of volunteers or family members in the U.S. Others have been bused to New York by Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been transporting migrants to Democratic-led cities to protest President Biden’s border policies.
For several months last year, El Paso city officials also sent dozens of buses of migrants to New York. But its operation was designed to reduce overcrowding in local shelters, not to send a political message.