News media pressed New York City Mayor Eric Adams with question surrounding his attendance of Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington D.C. and skipping out on Martin Luther King Jr. Day engagements in New York City at his weekly Tuesday media briefing at City Hall.
The mayor said he did not want “to be warring with the president,” but instead wanted to work with the president. He invoked King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, saying he was “living that dream,” and his attendance at Trump’s inauguration was to “continue to move forward on that dream.”
When asked throughout the press conference about the status of migrants in the city in the midst of a second Trump term, he appeared agitated and said multiple times he would not answer questions he had answered in the past. He reiterated that undocumented immigrants should continue to attend school and use hospital and police services, and that only those undocumented immigrants who committed violent crimes would be the target of Trump’s plan for deportation.
“I was very clear for almost a year now, a year and a half now, those who commit violent crimes in our city have violated their right to be in our city and in our country,” said Adams. “And we're going to continue to collaborate with ICE around criminality.”
When asked about the safety of such sensitive locations such as schools and places of worship from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers, the mayor said he was discussing such matters with ICE.
“It's all part of our conversations that we're having with ICE about these sensitive locations and other aspects of it,” said Adams. “If you're not at the table, you're not able to give real good input.”
This comes following a New York City Council meeting on Thursday in which the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Manuel Castro stated, “There is no existing law that protects these sensitive locations,” in reference to protection from ICE.
Adams also dished on his conversation with Trump after meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, stating they had discussed "many things," including improving New York City, the Gaza ceasefire deal and infrastructure issues in the city, among other things.
NYPD Chief of Transit Joseph Gulotta made an appearance at the press briefing to give an overview of the overnight deployment of NYPD officers in subways for the next six months as part of a new safety initiative from Governor Kathy Hochul. The plan is a phased rollout of officers that will eventually see police on every overnight train starting from 9:00pm until 5:00am.
As of now, 100 NYPD personnel have been patrolling trains on the A, G, J and L lines since Monday and will ramp up to around 300 officers with two on every single line. The city and state governments will split the $154 million cost of police deployment in the subways.
The mayor was also asked about five early childhood care centers in the city whose leases weren’t renewed at city-controlled buildings in Brooklyn and Queens. City officials said the programs did not have many children enrolled and thus was a waste of rent money.
“At that center, we were paying a million dollars a year [on] rent, but only four children were registered. That just doesn't add up,” said Adams. “We noticed that we had far too many centers that were being opened and we didn't have pupils in there. So, we had to realign the system.”
He assured parents that every child in the city still had access to a seat if they so desired.
The mayor also praised a myriad of recent policy actions aimed at helping struggling New Yorkers, including a $650 million plan to address street homelessness and expecting families in shelters.
Under the “Bridge to Home” program, NYC Health + Hospitals will provide a home-like environment to patients with severe mental illness who do not have a home to stay in after discharge and offer intensive treatment and comprehensive support to them.
“We know when we bring people into the hospital, we discharge them, they go right back to the streets,” said Adams. “We’re hoping that this initiative that we’re trying is going to have a safe landing for them. We’re going to ensure these individuals stay on the path towards sustained success.”
The program will also expand the city’s capacity to house unsheltered homeless people through an additional 900 safe haven beds and 100 runaway and homeless youth beds to go along with intensive wraparound services and resources offered to them. The initiatives will ramp up in Fiscal Year 2026 and will be fully implemented in Fiscal Year 2027.
The mayor also praised the start of his administration’s efforts to relieve half a million New Yorkers of $2 billion worth of medical debt, as part of a relief program launched by him last year: “Each time we hear the stories of individuals who are dealing with medical debt, it just really impacts you,” said Adams. “This is the number one cause of bankruptcy. This is a huge huge initiative.”
