New York City’s Democrat Mayor Eric Adams is begging NYC’s wealthy residents for financial help as the “sanctuary city” struggles to cope with the strain on resources caused by President Joe Biden’s migrant crisis.
Adams is urging rich New Yorkers to open their wallets to help weather a financial storm as the city remains overwhelmed by the flood of illegal aliens.
The call from Adams comes just days after the city unveiled deep budget cuts.
“This is a moment where it’s an all hands on deck moment,” Adams told a Police Athletic League lunch on Friday.
“The way it goes, New York goes, America goes, but I’m going to need you more than ever to support many of these organizations like PAL, Robin Hood Foundation, and others,” he said, according to the New York Post.
“A moment where our philanthropic interests must align with some of the gaps and services that we are seeing today.”
Adams also reportedly urged New Yorkers to “reach out to Washington, D.C.” and demand more support for the city.
According to Adams, NYC is carrying a “national crisis.”
The remarks came a day after the “sanctuary city” announced that it is reducing police numbers to divert funds to support migrants.
The city is also slashing budgets in areas like education and sanitation.
Adams announced a $110.5 billion budget, saying that cuts across all agencies were necessary.
The city spent $1.45 billion in fiscal 2023 on the migrant crisis.
In 2024 and 2025, the city expects to spend another $11 billion in taxpayer money.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) will freeze hiring to bring numbers below 30,000 by the end of fiscal year 2025.
The city wants to lower the number of cops from over 33,000.
There will also be deep cuts to education, including the universal pre-kindergarten program, and sanitation.
New York City has seen over 130,000 migrants come to the city since last year.
The issue is part of the knock-on effect of the nearly three-year crisis at the southern border caused by Biden’s policies.
However, the numbers seen in NYC are just a fraction of the more than 2.4 million migrant encounters at the southern border in FY 23.
Nevertheless, Adams has warned that the crisis could “destroy” the city.
Meanwhile, the budget cuts drew fury from the city’s teachers and police unions.
“This is truly a disaster for every New Yorker who cares about safe streets,” police union President Patrick Hendry said.
“Cops are already stretched to our breaking point, and these cuts will return us to staffing levels we haven’t seen since the crime epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s.”
“We cannot go back there. We need every level of government to work together to find a way to support police officers and protect New York City’s thirty years of public safety progress,” he said.
New York City and other liberal jurisdictions, including Massachusetts and Chicago, have called for additional federal help with the numbers they are seeing.
The Biden administration has pointed to more than $770 million it has given out to support communities taking in migrants in the last year.
The White House also points to the recommendations its teams of experts have made.
A DHS official argued that the department has also deployed personnel to help with authorizing work permits and to educate migrants on the immigration system.
Separately, the White House has requested an additional $14 billion in emergency funding for border operations.
That funding includes an additional $1.4 billion in grants to help local governments and nonprofits.
However, the crisis at the border continues.
There were more than 249,000 migrant encounters in October.
The number is only slightly lower than the record high set in September.
Since the beginning of the fiscal year, there has been an average of over 1,000 detected gotaways per day.
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