Harris has too much on plate to fix migrant crisis, says mayor
NEW YORK’S Democratic mayor has taken aim at “border czar” Kamala Harris over the spiralling migrant crisis, saying she has “too much in her portfolio”.
Eric Adams, a centrist, has criticised the administration of Joe Biden, the US president, for its failure to provide enough federal aid to help the city. It is the first time he has attacked the vice-president directly – laying bare an apparent division between America’s highest-profile Democrats.
Mr Adams said during a City Hall news conference: “There needs to be an individual who is dedicated to do the decompression strategy [fair distribution of migrants] for the federal government.
“The VP has too much in her portfolio to be focused on just doing that decompression strategy.”
New York, a so-called sanctuary city for refugees, has been overwhelmed by nearly 70,000 new arrivals – mostly illegal migrants bussed in from Texas.
The influx has put a huge strain on the city’s budget as well as its system for sheltering homeless people.
Mr Biden asked Ms Harris to lead on a number of portfolios, including efforts to stem the surge of migrants across the southern border.
Sources close to Ms Harris apparently told reporters that she was not happy being tasked with the intractable migration crisis, and wanted a more “softball” foreign policy assignment.
She quickly came under fire from Republicans for not immediately visiting the region and has been criticised for not doing enough to stem the problem. Only 39 per cent of Americans approve of Ms Harris’s performance on the issue, according to a recent aggregate of surveys Mr Adams said the White House “must come up with how they’re going to distribute the $800 million (£671million)” in migrant aid that was part of a $1.7trillion spending plan of Mr Biden’s. He said: “That is taking far too long. Let’s get the money flowing.”
The city has been awarded less than $8million of the $1billion requested by the mayor.
Claudia Tenney, US Republican Representative, said: “The Biden administration has created the worst border crisis in our nation’s history. The vicepresident has proven incompetent.”