Nine buses with nearly half a thousand migrants on board arrived in New York City this Sunday, sent from the border by the governor of Texas, Republican Gregg Abbott, who since April has transferred thousands of asylum seekers to this city, to Washington DC and Chicago in protest against the immigration policy of the president, Joe Biden.
Fearing the collapse of the city's shelter system, New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, announced that he is considering legal action against Texas, adding that he is considering housing immigrants on cruise ships.
"We're looking at everything to see how we deal with this," Adams said Sunday in an interview on WCBS radio station.
The Mayor's Office contacted the management of the Norwegian Cruise Line cruise company to discuss the possibility of accommodating asylum seekers on one of its ships, a source familiar with that plan told The New York Times.
At least 11,000 migrants
have arrived at New York homeless shelters since May, the mayor said.
Many arrived on buses sent directly to the city by Abbott, and others were able to travel from Washington, where Texas has sent more than 8,000 immigrants.
In September alone, New York shelters received 1,500 migrants.
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Adams called the situation
a "humanitarian crisis"
in a series of television interviews Sunday, holding the rulers of Texas and Arizona responsible for sending the migrants.
"Our legal team is looking at potential legal claims against Texas," he told CBS News.
“We have options, because when you inadvertently put someone on a bus, we think that's not in line with the law,” he said.
A group of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, queue to board a bus to New York in El Paso, Texas, on Friday.Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters
In addition to the thousands of migrants sent by Texas to New York and Washington DC (in recent days, directly to the residence of the vice president, Kamala Harris), the governor of Florida, Republican Ron DeSantis, took responsibility last week for the transfer in two planes of fifty asylum seekers to the island of Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts.
Several assured that a woman, whom they only identified as Perla, deceived them in San Antonio, Texas, promising to speed up their work permits.
In the last week, the arrival of buses to Manhattan also increased.
“Before, it used to be one or two a day, three days a week.
Now there are six or seven in a day and almost every day, sometimes even at night,” a humanitarian worker told The New York Post.
On Saturday six buses arrived from El Paso.
Many of the migrants said they came from Venezuela.
"This is an American crisis that we must face, a humanitarian crisis created by human hands, by some of the governors of the southern states," Adams said on ABC News.
Cruise ships for migrants like in 2002?
New York has opened 23 emergency shelters for migrants in hotels.
Adams told CNN that she does not consider abandoning the right to housing law, which guarantees shelter to anyone who asks for it, but said the city must evaluate how to implement that rule.
Greg Abbott has sent more than 11,000 immigrants to cities run by Democrats
Sept.
17, 202200:18
“With the influx we have, probably 38 more emergency shelters will have to be opened.
So we have to find temporary measures to address this problem,” Adams told WCBS.
Adams recalled that former Mayor Michael Bloomberg considered the idea of housing homeless families on a cruise ship in 2002, when New York City's shelter system housed 36,000 people.
Bloomberg abandoned the idea after receiving criticism.
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Deborah Diamant, director of legal affairs for the Coalition for the Homeless, said
the idea of the cruise is insulting
and raises concerns about homeless people's access to transportation, food and schools.
Diamant said it's part of an attempt by the mayor to try to hide the homeless crisis.
“It has pushed people to the periphery so they are out of sight,” she criticized.
Diamant added that the solution for migrants is the same as for the city's homeless: affordable housing.
