NYC Mayor Eric Adams joins DC in declaring a state of emergency over bused migrants from Texas

On Friday, Mayor Eric Adams decided to follow D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s lead and declare a state of emergency in New York City over bused migrants from Texas.

Adams announced during a press conference, “We are in a crisis situation. New York City now has more than 61,000 in our shelter system.”

With the shelter system at capacity, Adams estimated that the city will have spent $1 billion by the end of the fiscal year.

The mayor reported that 17,000, or one in five, are asylum-seekers bused to the city from border states. He estimated that five or six buses arrive daily from Texas and elsewhere.

Adams stole a page out of Washington, D.C., Mayor Bowser’s playbook, who declared a public emergency on September 8 after receiving approximately 9,400 migrants from Arizona and Texas since April. The declaration granted Bowser additional administrative authority outside the power her position would typically grant.

In addition to the emergency declaration, Adams also announced an executive order to suspend land use requirements, stating that it would help the city to handle the influx of migrants.

Adams has requested assistance from large hotels and places of worship to provide temporary housing for migrants.

“This is a humanitarian crisis that started with violence and instability in South America. And it is being accelerated by American political dynamics,” said Adams.

Without naming names, the mayor blamed the migrant crisis on Republican leaders. “Our right to shelter laws, our social services, and our values are being exploited by others for political gain,” stated Adams. “New Yorkers are angry. I am angry too.”

Adams called on Texas to stop sending migrants to New York City, a self-declared sanctuary city. He argued that there was never an agreement for NYC to take in and house migrants crossing the southern border.

Adams said he believes the city has been “forced to bear far more than its share of this national crisis.”

Before busing migrants elsewhere, Texas and other border states were exclusively bearing the weight of the open-border crisis intentionally created by the federal government.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott fired back at Mayor Adams' public emergency declaration on Twitter.

“Sanctuary cities like New York City experience a FRACTION of what Texas border communities face every day,” wrote Abbott. “We’ll continue busing migrants to NYC, DC, & Chicago to relieve our overwhelmed border towns until Biden does his job to secure the border.”