Adams warned Biden there was no room for migrants. Now they’re sleeping on the sidewalk.

NEW YORK — Images of migrants forced to sleep on Manhattan sidewalks in recent days are hammering home a point New York City Mayor Eric Adams has long been trying to make to President Joe Biden. “We need help,” Adams said Monday. “And it’s not going to get any better. From this moment on, it’s downhill.” Photos, videos and interviews from the street outside the midtown Manhattan hotel doubling as an intake center are circulating online and in the national media. Groups of newly arrived men resigned to sleeping on cardboard boxes have found that, as Adams has repeatedly warned the White House, there is no room for them. “No one wants anyone sleeping on the street or being used as a pawn in a political fight, but it’s just plain reality that there’s no more room,” a City Hall adviser told POLITICO. “And week after week, the pressure is going to keep mounting on Washington to do something now or wait for it to impact the 2024 elections.” The images are stark, but they’re unlikely to prompt Biden and his top aides to take immediate action as they’ve said the national immigration problem requires a congressional solution. Adams has blamed the White House for not sending enough financial aid or acting on requests like expedited work authorization. More than 93,000 migrants have come to the city since last spring. More than half remain in its care. Adams, Hochul to Biden: Expedite work permits for asylum seekers SharePlay Video “There were bordering states that received more money than us, and they’re using the money to bus people to New York,” Adams said Monday at an unrelated news conference. He said New York City has received only $30 million in federal aid thus far for a crisis he estimated would cost $4.2 billion by next summer. New York congressional leaders also announced in June that New York City was allocated nearly $105 million in FEMA funds for the migrant crisis. Adams said the city has yet to receive that money. The mayor and other Democrats have decried how Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida bused and flew migrants to New York and other cities as political stunts. But the visuals of migrants sleeping on makeshift mattresses or in vans outside New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel could similarly catch Biden’s attention. Adams has at times broken with national Democratic messaging, including on immigration and public safety. Last May, he was left off the Biden reelection campaign’s list of 50 surrogates after accusing the White House of failing New York City on migrants. The exclusion came despite Adams’ touting of the working-class roots he and Biden share. Leaving migrants to sleep on the streets could also hurt Adams, who’s been accused by more progressive Democrats of not doing enough to accommodate them. While the mayor insists the city is at its capacity, there are more options to house newcomers. “There are spaces and there are opportunities to make space for people,” said Democratic consultant Camille Rivera, adding that everyone from commercial building owners to parents at schools could pitch in. “This is an operational juggernaut and intake is hard, but this is New York City, and you do what you need to do to make sure people are taken care of.” Lupe Todd-Medina, another Democratic consultant, said the images may spur help from other corners. “If anything, my hope is that the business community and the real estate community see what is going on and they also act,” she said. Efforts to authorize the conversion of empty commercial space into residences have languished in Albany. Adams, for his part, has said that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to housing migrants. He has resettled asylum-seekers in Texas, Florida and as far away as China, bussed them north to the suburbs, temporarily set them up in public school gymnasiums and even considered using a shuttered prison for migrant shelter. Adams has opened 194 different sites around the city to accommodate migrants, including large-scale intake centers. Mayoral spokesman Fabien Levy said the city struggles every day to free up beds for migrants. He said children and families are prioritized and placed in shelter every night. “We continue to do our best to at least offer adults a temporary place to wait off the sidewalks,” Levy said in a statement, “but, in all honesty, New Yorkers may continue to see more and more migrants waiting outside as hundreds of asylum seekers continue to arrive in our city seeking shelter every day.” MOST READ 230802-Donald-Trump-Getty.jpg Trump’s new judge is a tough Jan. 6 sentencer — and has a history with him California lieutenant governor joins call for Taylor Swift to postpone Los Angeles shows Trump’s indictments are having diminishing returns for his political fundraising Pence on Trump’s indictment: ‘Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president’ Trump indicted for bid to overturn 2020 election A White House spokesperson noted that Adams, New York’s senators and the city’s House Democrats met last week with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in Washington, D.C. Mayorkas said that he would appoint a liaison to the city to coordinate on migrants, according to attendees of the closed-door huddle. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that Mayorkas stressed in the meeting that an outdated immigration system is something “only Congress can fix through bipartisan legislative action.” The spokesperson added that the Biden administration has “brought unlawful border crossings down markedly since the return to Title 8 processing.” While New York City may have received less federal funding to support migrants than border cities, it has received the most of any interior city. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.