Adams To Biden: Help NYC Before It Spends $12B On Migrant Crisis

NEW YORK CITY — New York City could spend as much as $12 billion on the asylum seeker crisis by 2025 if federal and state officials don't step up to help, said Mayor Eric Adams.

Adams dropped the city's staggering new projected price tag for migrants during an address Wednesday that amounted to a not-so-subtle plea for President Joe Biden and others to fix an ongoing immigration crisis.

"If we don’t get the support we need, New Yorkers could be left with a $12 billion bill," he said.

The estimate dwarfs a previous projection from City Hall that pegged the cost at more than $4 billion by July 2024.

That past estimate has been disputed on several fronts, including by the New York City Independent Budget Office, which found a worst-case scenario of $600 million less than what Adams and other city officials contended.

Adams said the city has so far spent $1.45 billion to provide shelter, food and services to nearly 100,000 asylum seekers.

"Let me repeat: almost 100,000 men, women and children have asked for a place to stay," he said. "That’s almost the population of Albany, New York."

More migrants are likely to arrive and continue to strain the city's system to the breaking point, Adams said.

Recent scenes of migrants sleeping on the pavement outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan will become more common if the city doesn't receive help from federal and state officials, he said.

The mayor didn't mention Biden's name, but indirectly did so as he called for the "federal government" to declare a state of emergency and lead a national decompression strategy at the U.S. border.

Without a wide variety of federal and state actions, the city will suffer, Adams said.

He said the past week saw 2,900 migrants arrive.

"You don't have to be a mathematician to understand what this is doing to our city," he said.

"Every service in this city is going to be impacted."