Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams promised to help New Yorkers shift their anger surrounding the ongoing migrant crisis in the “right direction.” And on Tuesday, Adams offered up a target: Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Abbott has bussed tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to New York for months, creating a strain on the city’s resources that the mayor claims necessitated his unpopular budget cuts in November. In response, Adams declared an executive order on December 27, requiring charter bus companies to provide 32 hours of advance notice of the arrival of buses with migrants, as well as limiting the times of day they can be dropped off.
The Texas governor found an easy way to circumvent the policy: Buses are now dropping migrants at train stations in New Jersey.
“What Governor Abbott has done in his total reckless disregard for using people as pawns, he has shifted, and he just wants to create chaos,” Adams said. “We’re dealing with a person who just wants to disrupt. It’s not just about raising the attention on an issue. This is a mean-spirited way (of) using people and disrupting municipalities.”
Fabien Levy, deputy mayor for communications, underscored the administration’s feelings toward Abbott with a reference from the superhero film “The Dark Knight."
“There’s a line in it that some men can’t be reasoned with or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn,” Levy said. “Greg Abbott is that man. He can’t be reasoned with. He can’t be negotiated with. He just wants to watch this country burn.”
Adams pushed back on the suggestion that the executive order is backfiring, insisting that he anticipated Abbott’s workaround, which mirrors the approach Abbott took when Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson enacted a similar policy in November.
Liza Zornberg, chief counsel to the mayor, said the administration has spoken to adjacent municipalities in New Jersey and New York about issuing similar executive orders. George Hoehmann, supervisor of Clarkstown, New York, issued an order in December banning charter bus companies from making unannounced “migrant dropoffs.”
“We are continually anticipating the move of his actions,” Adams said of Abbott. The mayor said he would change the executive order, if and when necessary.
Another part of Adams’ strategy to manage the crisis has been to challenge the city’s “right to shelter” regulation, which mandates that the city provide housing to anyone who requests it. The administration has argued in court that the requirement should not apply to a humanitarian crisis.
Abbott, meanwhile, has justified his bussing of migrants to New York because of its status as a “sanctuary city,” which prohibits local law enforcement from reporting the immigration status of individuals.
