The mayor of New York, Eric Adams, declared a state of emergency on Friday to respond to the arrival in recent months of thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers, many of them sent on buses by the authorities of the state of Texas.

Adams explained that the city expects to spend at least $1 billion this year to help these people and that its shelter system is practically full, so he asked for urgent help from the federal and state governments and called for a coordinated plan to move immigrants to other locations in the country.

According to the mayor, since last April more than 17,000 asylum seekers, mostly South Americans, have been bused to New York from the southern border of the United States.

Adams said that since September there has been an average of five or six buses each day and that this Thursday nine arrived. Four more did so today, according to the New York Post.

“Thousands of asylum seekers have been bused into New York City and simply left here, without warning, coordination or attention, and more continue to arrive every day,” Adams denounced, referring to the shipments of migrants they are organizing. the governor of Texas, Gregg Abbott, and other Republican officials from the south of the country.

“This is a humanitarian crisis that began with violence and instability in South America and is being accelerated by US political dynamics,” added the Democratic mayor.

Abbott and other Republican governors have used this tactic of sending immigrants to New York, Washington and other Democratic-controlled cities to spread the immigration burden and protest the policies of President Joe Biden.

By law, New York is one of the few in the United States that has the obligation to give shelter to anyone and not leave anyone on the street, although the arrival of thousands of immigrants is putting the system to the test.

According to Adams, there are now more than 61,000 people in the city’s foster care system, of which nearly 20,000 are children and one in five is an asylum seeker.

“Our shelter system is operating at close to 100% capacity and if these trends continue, we will have over 100,000 people in the next year. That’s way more than the system was designed to handle. It is unsustainable. The city will run out of funds for other priorities,” she warned.

The mayor assured that New York is committed to doing everything possible to support these people, for example by finding them accommodation in hotels or permanent housing, but insisted that he is running out of means.

With the declaration of the state of emergency, Adams explained that all city agencies will have to coordinate to build emergency shelters and that certain regulations on land use will be suspended to facilitate that process.

The city is already in the process of setting up tents to house migrants on an island off Manhattan and expects them to be operational in the coming weeks and shelter hundreds of people, although it will only be temporary accommodation for a few days, so the tents do not solve the problem.

In addition, Adams said today that a project for New York homes to take in asylum seekers or homeless people will be announced soon, because many citizens “want to help.”

New York negotiates with four cruise companies to accommodate immigrants

The city of New York is currently negotiating with four cruise companies to temporarily accommodate immigrants on their empty ships in the face of the migration crisis in the city.

Adams’s chief of staff, Frank Carone, said that among these companies are Carnival Cruise Line and Tallink & Silja, the latter flying the Estonian flag and with some experience in hosting Ukrainian refugees who fled the Russian invasion, according to reports. local media.

The negotiations have left out the famous Norwegian Cruise Line, with which it has been negotiating for weeks but which has asked for too high a price, so the mayor’s office is now looking for “better agreements”, without having closed any yet.

The mayor explained this Friday that the shelter system is practically full, so he asked for urgent help from the federal and state governments and called for a coordinated plan to transfer immigrants to other locations in the country.

According to Adams, since last April more than 17,000 asylum seekers, mostly South Americans, have been bused to New York from the southern border of the United States, in shipments organized by the government of the state, dominated by line Republicans. hard.

Precisely the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, responded almost immediately to Adams’ emergency declaration on his Twitter account, where he wrote: “Shelter cities like New York suffer a fraction of what the border populations of Texas face daily We will continue to bus migrants to New York, Washington and Chicago,” all cities with Democratic mayors.

These shipments will continue, Abbott continued, “until (President Joe) Biden does his job of securing the border.”