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 city’s 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 it’s been the driving force behind his most recent round of budget cuts.