Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ships migrants to New York City by bus; New York Mayor Eric Adams is shipping them out by air, offering migrants one-way tickets out of town.
Adams' office confirmed this week that it has set up a re-ticketing center in the East Village, where migrants hoping to find vacant beds are instead offered flights to anywhere in the world on the city's dime. City Hall's makeshift travel agency began just last weekend, it said.
The move comes amid ongoing frustration with the Biden administration for not doing more to subsidize and help offset the immigration crisis.
"With no sign of a decompression strategy in the near future, we have established a re-ticketing center for migrants," City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said Tuesday. "Here, the city will redouble efforts to purchase tickets for migrants to help them take the next steps in their journeys."
The cost of a flight — even international — is less than the daily $394 per-migrant cost that New York City is now facing since becoming a sanctuary city and a top destination to which Abbott sends migrants. Adams said city estimates put the price tag at $4.7 billion this year alone for more than 100,000 asylum seekers.
Further, there are no more rooms in the inn, so to speak. Adams warned Tuesday that migrants are facing a winter outdoors because the city is at capacity and 4,000 new migrants are arriving each week.
"When you are out of room, that means you're out of room," Adams told reporters Tuesday. "Every year, my relatives show up for Thanksgiving; and they want to all sleep at my house. There's no more room. That's where we are right now."
The city reportedly is mulling whether to allow migrants to create encampments in public parks. But what the city is running out of are rooms and showers.
When migrants show up at the East Village location looking for a roof, they're met with a note attached to the door in English, Spanish, Arabic, French, and Russian that reads: "This is not a respite site/shelter. There are no beds at this site. We are here to help you get to transportation to any state, or country of your convenience."
It's not the first time Adams has flown migrants from New York. Politico reported the city spent $50,000 on travel costs over a 12-month period to resettle 114 migrant households domestically and internationally. Florida received 28 families while Texas received 14, far fewer than the number Abbott has shipped to New York.
"It's unconscionable that this is the tone and tact this administration is taking when immigrants have been the lifeline and lifeblood of this city for centuries," New York Immigration Coalition Murad Awawdeh told Politico.
But as Adams said in August, "Our compassion may be limitless, but our resources are not."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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