US President Joe Biden has apparently had a falling out with the mayor of the country's largest megapolis, New York City’s Eric Adams, because his fellow Democrat has criticized his administration’s handling of an illegal immigration crisis.
The conflict bubbled up on Tuesday, when Adams was asked in a ‘Good Day NY’ television interview about the city’s struggles to cope with a massive migrant influx, “Where the heck is the president of the United States?” The mayor replied, “That is a good question, and I think we all should be asking why this is happening to a city that was turning itself around and will continue to do so.”
A surge in illegal crossings of the US-Mexico border to all-time highs began to hit home for New York last year, when the governors of Texas and Florida began bussing migrants to Democrat-controlled cities. “This should not be happening to New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and the other big northern cities,” Adams said. “And really, it should not be happening to El Paso or Brownsville, Texas. No city should be carrying this burden. This is a national problem, and it needs a national solution.”
Feeling pressure from his own constituents, Adams has escalated his criticism of the Biden administration in recent weeks amid increasing struggles to accommodate the illegal aliens streaming into his city. Parents were up in arms on Tuesday over the city’s plan to house hundreds of migrants in school gymnasiums after running out of space elsewhere. Homeless veterans were reportedly kicked out of hotels in upstate New York, where they had been given temporary shelter, to make room for illegal immigrants being bused from New York City.
Adams was reportedly excluded from Biden’s re-election campaign team to punish him for alleged disloyalty. The mayor had announced earlier this year that he would be serving on the campaign’s national leadership advisory team, but when the group’s official membership list was released last week, Adams was left off.
“This is a shot to the chops from the Biden team,” political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told the New York Post. “The message is: Don’t criticize an incumbent Democratic president and don’t criticize the first black female vice president. Any criticism from a Democrat heading into re-election is seen as a betrayal.”
Adams hasn’t been alone in sounding the alarm over the immigration crisis. New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has asked Biden’s administration for funding help and access to federal installations, such as military bases, to house illegal aliens. “You’re going to start seeing people living in tents not just on the border, but in the streets of New York and across New York state because we’ve reached a breaking point,” she said on Monday in an MSNBC interview.