Amid his city’s massive struggles with illegal immigrants over the last two years, Mayor Eric Adams wants to amend New York City’s sanctuary laws so that illegal immigrants who’ve committed violent crimes aren’t protected.
Adams said multiple times this week that he wants to tighten these regulations, the last time which happened at a press conference on Tuesday. As he said at that press conference:
“I don’t believe people who are violent in our city and commit repeated crimes should have the privilege of being in our city.
“You don’t have the right to be in our city and tarnish the overwhelming number who are here following the rules.”
Adams made similar remarks on Monday during a Q&A session. At that event, he said:
“The overwhelming amount of migrants that are here, they want to work. I still don’t understand why the federal government’s not allowing them to work. They need to have the right to work like all of us that have come to this country had the ability to do so.
“But, those small numbers that are committing crimes, we need to modify the sanctuary city law that if you commit a felony, a violent act, we should be able to turn you over to [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and have you deported.
“It is a right to live in this city, and you should not be committing crimes in our city. Right now, we don’t have the authority to do so.”
Adams tried to prop up the job his administration has done in dealing with the many challenges that have been placed upon it during the massive surge in migrants that have come to the city in the last two years.
At the same time, Adams said that his administration’s hands are tied by both local and federal law.
For a while now, Adams has said that migrants who commit crimes shouldn’t be protected by the city’s sanctuary laws, and should be allowed to be handed over to ICE, who could deport them.
Part of the reason why New York City has struggled so much handling the migrant crisis is due to a local rule that requires the city to offer a bed to every homeless person, The New York Times reported late last year.
The city has about 70,000 migrants who are crammed into hundreds of emergency shelters throughout the city. Every month, this is costing the city hundreds of millions of dollars, The Times reported.
An official in the Adams administration said that the city having to figure out how to feed and house all these new migrants is “our new normal.” The Times reported that New York City is seeing about 500 new migrants arriving every day, only adding to the massive problem.
While Adams is a Democrat, he’s turned on President Joe Biden and placed much of the blame for what his city is facing on the White House’s lack of action.
