New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday announced sweeping budget cuts to the city's services to offset the cost of dealing with the ever-increasing number of migrants arriving in the Big Apple.
More than 110,000 migrants have arrived in New York City over the past year, including roughly 13,000 sent from Texas by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott as part of his ongoing bussing plan to send new arrivals to the U.S. to sanctuary cities.
"No city should be left to handle a national humanitarian crisis largely on its own, and without the significant and timely support we need from Washington, D.C., today's budget will only be the beginning," he said, according to the New York Times.
The cuts will see police freeze hiring and bring the total number of police officers below 30,000. It would further slash the education budget by $1 billion over two years and affect a litany of other agencies.
"In all my time in government, this is probably one of the most painful exercises I've gone through," he added.
The sheer volume of migrants has forced Adams to explore unconventional housing options, such as abandoned schools, to accommodate them and comply with the city's right to shelter mandate. Adams has since moved to suspend the mandate and requested aid from the Biden administration to deal with the influx.
The mayor in September warned that the crisis would "destroy New York City."
"I’m gonna tell you something, New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I didn’t see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this," he said at the time.
The situation has so deteriorated that city officials such as chief Adams advisor Ingrid Lewis Martin have called on the Biden administration to clamp down on border security.
"The federal government needs to do its job. We need the federal government, the Congress members, the Senate and the president to do their job: close the borders," Martin insisted in early October. "And until you close the borders, you need to come on with a full-on decompression strategy where you can take all of our migrants and move them through our 50 states."
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