One of the country's great sanctuary cities, New York, is struggling to deal with illegal immigration. The mayor, Eric Adams, has been warning the country for some time about the immigration crisis that the city is experiencing. He has been taking measures to alleviate it. His latest measure involves offering immigrants a free one-way plane ticket to leave. He even lets them choose where they want to go, whether that be within the United States or abroad.
As reported by POLITICO, New York is sending immigrants away from public shelters. They are being directed to an office to request and reserve their plane ticket. The situation has become so bad that the mayor had to limit immigrant families with children to 60 days maximum in city shelters.
Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for the New York City Council, confirmed the reticketing center in statements reported by the digital media THE CITY :
With no sign of a decompression strategy in the near future, we have established a reticketing center for migrants. Here, the city will redouble efforts to purchase tickets for migrants to help them take the next steps in their journeys, and it helps us triage operations at The Roosevelt for new arrivals.
This initiative is reminiscent of Abbott's buses
Adams' strategy to displace immigrants is similar to what Greg Abbott did. To combat the immigration crisis, the governor of Texas decided to send busloads of illegal immigrants to several sanctuary cities. One of those destinations was New York.
The arrival of buses from Texas was a turning point in the thinking of the mayor of New York. At first, Adams welcomed illegal immigrants with "open arms," as he claimed, until Abbott started bussing them in. Based on initiatives like that, his opinions started to change.
Adams' reactions to the immigration crisis
Offering plane tickets to immigrants to leave is not Adams' first reaction to responding to the immigration crisis. In October 2022, Adams declared a state of emergency. He claimed that the wave of immigrants was going to cost the city $1 billion in the last fiscal year.
On other occasions, he has called out his own party and the federal government. Adams even confirmed that he has not spoken with Joe Biden since 2022. He didn't say whether this is because the government's immigration policies have caused tension between him and the White House.
Adams even said that the immigration crisis "will destroy" the city and could cause another event similar to 9/11.
