It does no good to ask Joe Biden or DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas if the border is secure or not. They will point to the decrease in arrests at the border and that deportations are up to prove their border plan is a huge success.
But the fact is that asylum seekers are still coming into the country at near-record numbers. The Biden administration has given asylum seekers the opportunity to make reservations via the CBP One App, the mobile application to book appointments at U.S. ports of entry, to seek asylum. The asylum seekers still have to wait several years for a court date and still need to be vetted, but in the meantime, they’re free to travel anywhere and access welfare benefits in most states.
Once they cross the border, most of the new arrivals travel to a city where they know they’ll be welcome. New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. are favorite destinations for the newcomers.
But there’s a problem. It’s a problem you probably haven’t heard much about because most of the national news media is too busy covering Trump’s legal troubles, how hot it can get in the summer, or some other story that doesn’t make Biden look like a heartless hypocrite.
Currently, there are thousands of people in some of the world’s greatest cities sleeping on the streets because Democratic big city mayors don’t have the money to shelter them. They have asked the president — the leader of their party — to help them in the worst humanitarian crisis of this century. A spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams outlined in stark terms exactly what the city was facing.
“As we’ve said for a while now, with more than 93,000 asylum seekers coming through our intake system since last spring, our teams run out of space every single day and we do our best to offer placements wherever we have space available,” Adams said. “Children and families continue to be prioritized and are found a bed every night. While we at least offered all adults a temporary place to wait off the sidewalks last night, some may have chosen to sleep outside and, in all honesty, New Yorkers may continue to see that more and more as hundreds of asylum seekers continue to arrive every day.”
“This is the heartbreaking reality and something our teams have worked tirelessly to avoid, but while our compassion is limitless, our resources are not,” he continued. “We still desperately need help from our state and federal partners. In the meantime, we encourage migrants to take us up placements available outside of New York City as they become available.”
“While our compassion is limitless, our resources are not” should be New York’s new motto. What good is “compassion” when you don’t have the resources to make good on your promises?
Where is Joe Biden and the federal government during this crisis? Mayor Adams is wondering the same thing.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams trekked down to DC Thursday to meet with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about migrants from the border overwhelming the city.
Mayorkas promised to . . . send a federal staffer.
He’s got to be kidding.
To do what, exactly?
Keep a seat warm in City Hall?
This, despite the growing calls from Democrats for real action by the White House on the border.
Mohamed Sale, who arrived Saturday in Manhattan from the West African nation of Mauritania, has his regrets.
“For now I regret coming. Maybe when I take a hotel and stay for two months to get on my feet, maybe I won’t regret,” he told News 4 New York.
It’s no better in Chicago or Washington, D.C. Chicago is also having problems finding room to shelter asylum seekers, with new arrivals sleeping in police stations, rec centers, and the street.
One neighborhood in which the city had placed a temporary shelter was up in arms about the behavior of the new arrivals.
Neighbors said they “no longer [had] any tolerance” for migrants who were loitering, engaging in late-night partying, prostitution, littering and even fighting with community members, CBS2 Chicago reported.
Distraught residents told city officials in attendance that the migrants’ behavior made them feel unsafe. “I would ask you all to go out there — go out there at night, in the middle of the night — and see what goes on,” one emotional resident said. Another woman vented, “They disrespect us, they rob us, they harass us.”
One local man threatened that if they didn’t address the issue, neighbors would take it into their own hands. “Let me say this — they’ve got one more time to deal with it, because otherwise, next time they deal with it, they’re going to deal with it from the streets. We’re going to take over. Nobody is going to be able to stop us from what we’re going to do to them.”
Again, Biden is AWOL. He and the rest of his administration are doing their best to keep the crisis out of the news and are careful to make sure the blowback lands on local politicians and not them. It’s one of the most cynical political ploys ever, and no matter how hard Republicans try to force Biden to shoulder the responsibility for this mess, they can’t get past Biden’s media firewall.