The Biden administration is blaming New York City Mayor Eric Adams for the migrant crisis there, telling NBC Adams doesn't have an exit strategy for migrants staying at city shelters.
"It's not an operationally sound effort," a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security told the news outlet.
The report comes almost a month after DHS sent an assessment team to study the way Adams' administration is handling the influx of migrants. According to the NBC report, a senior DHS official familiar with the team’s findings said "the city has 'no exit strategy' to see that migrants find their way out of its shelter system."
Nearly 60,000 migrants were staying in city homeless shelters as of September, according to Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services, and more than 100,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022.
Adams has called the situation a humanitarian crisis that will cost the city about $12 billion over three years.
His administration partly blames the federal government.
"As we have said repeatedly, with more than 110,000 asylum-seekers that have come through our care since spring 2022, and hundreds more arriving daily, we cannot continue to work to solve a national crisis that the federal government has refused to take meaningful action on," said Kayla Mamelak, deputy press secretary in the mayor's office. "We have opened more than 200 emergency shelters, have spent more than $2 billion to date, and expect to spend $5 billion this fiscal year alone without substantial aid from our state and federal partners.
"New York City has far passed its breaking point, and we continue to call on our federal partners to expedite work authorizations, declare a national state of emergency, create a decompression strategy, and lead on this national issue."