New York Mayor Eric Adams was in Puebla, Mexico, as part of his tour of Latin America aimed at discouraging migration to his city, where he says “there is no more room.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams arrived in the Mexican state of Puebla on Thursday with discordant messages, trying to maintain a middle ground as ruler of a city that is known for hosting migrants from around the world but is in hardship due to the continued influx of asylum seekers.
Inside Puebla’s sumptuous congressional building, covered in creamy yellow tiles interrupted only by Greco-Roman columns, Adams focused on the ties that bind his city to a central Mexican state that has sent some 800,000 of its inhabitants to New York over the years.
But later, speaking to reporters, Adams returned to the refrain of his Latin American trip: New York is “at capacity.”
“We’re neighbors. We are family. My house is your house. Their struggles are my struggles,” Adams said in the legislative chamber, interspersing some words in Spanish. Shortly before, the state governor, Sergio Salomón Céspedes, nicknamed him “mayor of Puebla York.”
Migrants “are our future and we cannot lose any of them,” Adams declared.
However, addressing the press immediately afterwards, the mayor was more direct.
“There is no more space in New York. Our hearts are infinite, but our resources are not,” she stated. “We don’t want to put people in community shelters. “We don’t want people to think they will find work.”
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Adams said about 800,000 migrants from the state of Puebla live in New York City, which has had to take in another 120,000 additional asylum seekers over the past year.
New York City asked a court Tuesday to allow it to suspend the city’s so-called “right to shelter,” a legal agreement that requires it to provide emergency shelter to anyone who requests it.
This request is the latest in a long series of attempts to suspend that law, which has long made New York a sanctuary city. The Adams government argued Tuesday that the agreement was never designed for a humanitarian crisis like the one the city faces today.
Adams said this crisis has been sparked in part by what he called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “inhumane” decision in April to send migrants from his state to New York City.
“These are human beings who have crossed very dangerous territories. And what he is doing is taking advantage of the situation for political reasons,” Adams said.
Previously, in his speech in the Puebla Congress, the mayor emphasized the role that New York’s migrant community played during the pandemic.
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“In COVID-19, it was your children who kept our stores open, the emergency services, the transportation and health professionals,” he said. “We survived COVID because their children were in our city.”
After the speeches of Salomón Céspedes and the mayor of the city, Eduardo Rivera Pérez, members of Congress began to chant in welcome: “Adams, brother, you are already from Puebla.”
Later, speaking to reporters in New York, Adams said these are “extremely challenging times.”
“It’s going to be extremely painful for New Yorkers, and for migrants and asylum seekers,” he said. “They deserve a more dignified environment than we can offer them because of the magnitude of this problem, and the costs associated with it.”
The mayor began a four-day tour of Latin America on Wednesday with a visit to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, a place of worship where many migrants go before beginning their journey north.
Over the next two days, Adams plans to travel to Quito and Bogotá before visiting the Darién Gap, an especially dangerous stretch of the northern route that many migrants travel, located on the border between Colombia and Panama.
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2023-10-06 11:15:55
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