Mayor Eric Adams is clapping back at Texas in their ongoing feud over the asylum seeker crisis.
Over the holiday season last month, he announced a $708 million lawsuit against 17 charter bus and transportation companies after issuing an emergency executive order to demand better coordination from southern states.
According to city numbers, the Adams administration has spent an estimated $3.5 billion on shelter and services for the more than 164,500 asylum seekers who have come through the city’s intake center between April 2022 and December 2023. They said they have also opened more than 210 emergency sites, including 18 large-scale humanitarian relief centers, so far.
“We’re going to navigate our way through this, but we need everyone to call—I’m calling on the federal government to do its job,” said Adams at this week’s in-person meeting on January 8. “New Yorkers are angry, asylum seekers are angry, the mayor’s angry, we’re all angry. But we are doing the best we have with the resources in front of us.”
Since 2022, Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has used numerous independently owned bus and transportation companies, some of which were already federally approved by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) under the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), to move people across state lines to Democrat-led states. Abbott is responsible for the direct transport of more than 33,600 migrants to New York City, said the city.
On December 27, 2023, Adams passed Executive Order 538 to get the manifest of a charter bus operator, as well as the time and location of drop-offs of asylum seekers, among other things. That was met with immediate backlash from immigration groups, and instead of complying with the order, the bus companies started dropping off migrants in New Jersey with train tickets to New York City instead. The shift prompted the city to go tit-for-tat and slap 17 “bad faith” bus companies identified in moving migrants up north with a lawsuit a few days later, claiming that transporting people without paying for the cost of continued care is in violation of New York’s Social Services Law.
Adams has the support of Governor Kathy Hochul, who’s come around to being slightly more vocal in asking for federal support when it comes to immigration issues, and more recently, the support of Governor Phil Murphy.
“Governor Abott continues to use human beings as political pawns, and it’s about time that the companies facilitating his actions take responsibility for their role in this ongoing crisis,” said Hochul in a statement. “If they are getting paid to break the law by transporting people in need of public assistance into our state, they should be on the hook for the cost of sheltering those individuals—not just passing that expense along to hard-working New Yorkers. I’m proud to support the mayor’s lawsuit.”
Murphy sent a letter to several charter bus companies with connections to transporting recent migrants from Texas and/or Louisiana to transit sites in New Jersey. He said dozens of charter buses have transported more than 1,800 individuals to transit sites in New Jersey since December 31, 2023. Like Adams, Murphy asked for more coordination and at least advanced notice of drop-off times so the state can better assist migrants.
“As we continue to see more migrants arrive to our state at the hands of the governor of Texas, who is reportedly funding the passengers’ transportation with taxpayer funds, notice to New Jersey officials in advance of these individuals’ anticipated arrival is critical to ensuring the health and safety of passengers once they arrive in New Jersey,” said Murphy. “Additionally, because we know the vast majority of these individuals are intending to travel to New York City, this information will be shared with our colleagues across the Hudson to ensure the passengers’ health and safety there.”
City Hall Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg clarified that the lawsuits and executive order are targeted at the Republicans Party’s “extreme conduct” to “flood and overwhelm” the social services system of specific cities for political reasons—not to block buses or migrants from coming, she said. They have purposefully not coordinated any efforts with the city and have at times dropped people off in the middle of the night, she said.
Some advocates felt that the city’s lawsuit was retaliatory and a waste of time. New York Immigration Coalition Executive Director Murad Awawdeh said that for almost two years, Adams has treated the arrival of asylum seekers as an emergency, trying everything he can to dissuade them from coming to New York rather than developing an efficient and thoughtful process to welcome them.
“This lawsuit is just another tactic in the Adams administration’s grab bag of ineffective approaches that have nothing to do with creating lasting change,” said Awawdeh. “The mayor needs to stop complaining that the city is at a breaking point and scapegoating immigrants.”
The Amsterdam News reached out to several bus companies listed in the lawsuit. Classic Elegance Coaches LLC based in El Paso and Road Runners Charters Inc. in Dallas said they had “no comment.”
On January 9, Hochul delivered her 2024 State of the State Address in Albany, which Adams attended. Her address was swiftly criticized for her proposals on public safety and lack of immigration initiatives. Shayna Kessler, associate director of advocacy for the Vera Institute of Justice’s Advancing Universal Representation initiative, said she was “disappointed” by the governor’s omission of critical immigration legal services from her top priorities.
“Immigrants are a crucial part of New York’s identity, culture, history, and economy,” Kessler said. “Supporting immigrants is key to securing the state’s future stability and prosperity. New York currently faces a labor shortage, with nearly half a million vacant jobs and not enough workers to fill them. As the executive budget is finalized, we call on Governor Hochul to increase funding for immigration legal services to $150 million and to support the passage of the Access to Representation Act, which would establish a right to counsel in immigration court in the state.”
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member who writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.