Mayor Eric Adams Warns New York City’s Migrant Crisis Could Ripple to Other Cities

Mayor Eric Adams warned that the immigration crisis currently straining the financial resources of New York City could have a ripple effect in other cities. 

"We have created a funnel," Adams told CBS Mornings on Thursday.

"All the bordering states have now took the funnel right to New York City," he said. "New York City is the economic engine of this entire state and country. If you decimate this city, you're going to decimate the foundation of what's happening with Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston."

New York has been on the receiving end of busloads of asylum seekers from Texas sent by the Lone Star State's Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been shipping migrants to sanctuary cities in protest of the Biden administration's immigration policies.

Mayor Adams said the surge at the southern border is a "national crisis" and has called on the Biden administration for $12 billion over three years to help the city help house, feed and clothe the thousands of migrants arriving in the city. 

Asked if he blames President Joe Biden for not taking a more forceful approach to the border situation, Adams said responsibility belongs to many while urging Congress to take up immigration reform. 

"Republicans have been blocking real immigration reform. We're seeing that FEMA is using dollars on the southern border to allow people to bus people to New York City," Adams told CBS. 

He said it is critical for Congress to address the root causes, saying "we have to ensure that we have real immigration reform, because it's going to continue."

The city said that roughly 100,000 asylum seekers have come to New York in the past year, pushing city services and finances past the breaking point. 

"Our compassion may be limitless, but our resources are not. This is the budgetary reality we are facing if we don’t get the additional support we need," Adams said in a statement on Wednesday.

The city is scrambling to provide housing to the arriving migrants even as it deals with an existing homeless situation. 

"Everyday, we are juggling where we are going to find another place so that human beings don't sleep on the street," he told CBS.