Mayor Adams travels to DC to ask for help with New York City's migrant crisis
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- New York City Mayor Eric Adams traveled to Washington, D.C., on Thursday for his tenth visit to ask the federal government for more help with funding for migrants.
This is the mayor's first trip to D.C. since he cut his trip short last month when federal agents raided the home of his top fundraiser in their investigation into his 2021 mayoral campaign.
On Thursday, the mayor met with Congressional leaders, including New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, to discuss securing more federal funding.
Adams says the best hope for help right now may be FEMA, which is supposed to start taking a more active role in the crisis.
"They want to take a new hands-on approach to this and we're going to sit down and get a menu of things with the plans they've put in place, a menu of things they can assist us on," Adams said. "There was a real sense of collaboration from the FEMA administrator to assist us in these very challenging times in all of these cities."
The Biden administration agreed to sit down with the mayor later Thursday evening.
"We have been committed and put forth resources for mayors to deal with the influx of migrant crisis, we've had multiple conversations," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
The migrant crisis has forced the mayor's office to make several rounds of budget cuts across all city agencies, which last month included the FDNY and NYPD.
Adams says he is working with other cities like Chicago and Denver on how to keep the band-aid fresh over a national sore spot.
"We're gonna have to get the President of the United States involved, he owes it to the American people to fix a broken border," said Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The Adams administration says 3,600 migrants arrived in New York City just last week.
ALSO READ: Eric Adam's 28% approval rating is lowest by NYC mayor in over quarter century in new poll
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