MR. MAYOR, ‘TAKE ME WITH YOU!’
Migrants in El Paso, Texas, urged Mayor Adams to take them back to the Big Apple with him Sunday — because they heard New York City can help them more than anywhere else.
Adams was greeted by a crowd of curious onlookers during one of the stops on his weekend tour of El Paso, a center of the migrant crisis that has overwhelmed his own city.
“I heard that they can help me in New York more than elsewhere. I heard the shelters are great there,” said Venezuelan native Kailey Marquez, one of the migrants gathered outside the Sacred Heart Catholic Church shelter during Adams’ visit.
“Take me with you,” some migrants told The Post when asked what their message would be to the visiting mayor.
Asked about the comments at a press conference later Sunday, Adams said that migrants thinking of coming to the five boroughs need to be warned: “There is no more room in New York.”
The mayor said more needs to be done at the national level to ensure migrants know what awaits them if they travel to the city.
Hizzoner’s reality check
“There’s an image that when you come to New York City, that automatically you’re going to be in this great place where all the resources are available,” he said.
“We have to give people accurate information,” Adams stressed, “and that’s what some of the centers are doing here, they are truly explaining to people that this is what’s happening to people in New York right now and New York you go there, you’re going to be living in congregate settings, that there is no more room in New York.
That should be coordinated by our national government, not only done locally here by those NGOs but it should be done by our national government.”
Adams also called on FEMA to appoint a point person to handle the migrant crisis.
He said he learned Sunday that websites are giving asylum seekers the “false impression” about what they can expect in New York, including that they would be living in hotels when actually it will be shelter housing.
“We learned today, which was very informative and that’s why it was important to come here, that there are websites that are advertising that New York City — basically the streets are paved with gold,” he said. “That there’s automatic employment, that you’re automatically going to be living in a hotel.”
The mayor earlier received a warm welcome from a group of dozens gathered outside the church-turned-shelter, who raised their hands and burst into applause after he asked them if they had come to the US to “work and experience the American Dream.”
Adams and Manuel Castro, his immigrant affairs commissioner, spoke to the asylum seekers after touring the church, which had opened its doors to migrants last month as the border was overrun by those anticipating the expiration of the pandemic emergency expulsion measure Title 42.
One man who told Adams he had first heard about New York
City by watching television elicited a cheerful laugh from the mayor, who spoke to migrants as Castro translated.
Some told The Post they were confused about why Adams was touring the border city, while others said they had wondered if President Biden had returned to El Paso after his visit last Sunday due to the mayor’s six-car motorcade and large security detail.
“I hope his visit has the purpose of helping us because we just want to get ahead in life,” said Marquez, who began her journey to the US with her husband and two children while pregnant.
Marquez said she had given birth in the US to a child who is now a 20-day-old citizen, and her other kids are 2 and 6 years old.
“I came here to work and have a better quality of life,” she said, while stating her desire to go to New York.
Two migrants from Venezuela outside the shelter told The Post that they, too, wanted to reach New York, with one pointing out
its status as a sanctuary city.
“I would like to go to sanctuary,” said Elvis Mendoza.
When asked what kind of help he wanted from the mayor, Mendoza replied, “That he take me to New York.”
Another man specifically said he wanted to go to Queens, although he did not explain why that was his preferred borough.
“I want a work permit so I can make a living. That’s why we came here,” said Hernesto Villafranca. “I just need a permit so I can go there and complete my reason for coming here.”
Touring border city
Adams toured the at-capacity shelter — which is filled with mostly unauthorized Venezuelan migrants and surrounded by people sleeping on the streets — with El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser and Ruben Garcia of Annunciation House, a network of shelters that has operated for 30 years.
Leeser — who has bussed thousands of migrants to New York City — greeted his fellow Democrat Saturday night and took him on an impromptu visit to parts of the city strained by the recent surge, as pictures shared by Adams’ press secretary Fabien Levy showed.
Hizzoner was photographed inspecting a chain link fence at the US-Mexico border and touring areas of El Paso where migrants have been sleeping on the street as the shelter system reached capacity. His tour was facilitated by the National Guard, sources told The Post.
The mayor, Leeser and local officials discussed how to “band together to call on the federal government to take the lead on tackling this crisis,” Levy wrote on Twitter.
Adams’ visit came days after he projected the migrant crisis would cost New York City as much as $2 billion — twice what he had initially estimated. He called on federal and state lawmakers to help foot the bill.
More than 39,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the Big Apple since the spring.