In rare NYC visit, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lauds Mayor Adams, Gov. Hochul for pressuring Biden over migrant crisis

NEW YORK — During a rare visit to New York on Wednesday, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott commended Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul for publicly pressuring President Biden to do more to alleviate the city’s migrant crisis — and urged them to crank it up a notch by joining him in calling for hardline policy prescriptions, like building a wall along the U.S. southern border.

Abbott, an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump, offered the favorable comments about the Democratic mayor and governor during a breakfast event at the Yale Club in Midtown hosted by the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, around the corner from the city’s Roosevelt Hotel migrant arrival center. Early on in his remarks, Abbott aligned himself with rhetoric from Adams, who said this spring that Biden “failed” New York and more recently that the migrant crisis “will destroy” the city.

“[The migrant crisis] is something that is unsustainable, I think those are the words of your mayor,” Abbott told the conservative crowd. “Those are the words of the governor of Texas.”

Many of the tens of thousands of the mostly Latin American migrants who have arrived in New York since last year first crossed into the U.S. via the Texas-Mexico border.

Abbott has for over a year drawn criticism from Adams and other Democrats for busing migrants from his state to New York and other liberal jurisdictions with little notice or coordination. Some migrants have allegedly been put on those buses against their will.

But in his Yale Club remarks, Abbott contended it’s counterintuitive to criticize him for the busing program, which he said is responsible for transporting about 15,000 migrants to New York out of a total of more than 110,000 who have arrived since last year. Rather, Abbott said politicians concerned about the influx should direct their ire at Biden — and added that he believes Adams and Hochul are “actually beginning to follow” that “solid piece of advice” in that they have lately ramped up their calls for more action from the feds.

“The challenge that the City of New York and the State of New York are dealing with, it’s all about one person: Joe Biden,” Abbott said. “Joe Biden can flip that switch any day and stop New York from having to deal with the consequences of an open border … They must prevail upon their president for more than just money, they need a change in policy.”

Among the actions Abbott said he’d like to see from the federal government — and which he urged Hochul and Adams to join him in demanding — is resuming construction on the border wall Trump as a presidential candidate falsely claimed Mexico would pay for.

“A border wall deters people from venturing across the border,” said Abbott.

Adams and his advisers have long called for a federal “decompression strategy” at the southern border to address the pace of migrants arriving in the city. They have stayed away from elaborating on how exactly such a strategy should look, however.

In a briefing at City Hall later Wednesday, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom would not say whether the Adams administration supports a border wall. She did urge Congress and the White House to “come up with a comprehensive immigration reform so that no one jurisdiction has to deal with a national issue on its own.”

Adams’ aggressive criticism of Biden’s handling of the migrant crisis has drawn pushback from Democrats who say it’s harming the president’s political standing going into the 2024 election.

Abbott’s accolades for Adams’ rhetoric marks the second time this month that national Republicans have quoted him to drive him a criticism of Biden over the migrant issue. Last week, House Republicans, as part of a hearing on the “Biden Border Crisis,” played a video clip of Adams saying the migrant crisis will “destroy” the city.

Asked about Abbott’s visit during an unrelated appearance in Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon, Adams played coy. “Is he in New York?” he told the Daily News with a grin before walking off.

Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak took a more aggressive tone in a statement on Abbott’s New York trip.

“When thousands of asylum seekers arrived at Governor Abbott’s doorstep in pursuit of the American dream, he chose to use them as political pawns. He put tens of thousands of families with children on buses, often without access to food, water, or restrooms, and pointed the blame at cities like New York,” Mamelak said. “If he genuinely wanted to be part of the solution to this humanitarian crisis, Governor Abbott would urge his Republican colleagues in Congress to collaborate with President Biden on desperately needed and long overdue immigration reform, instead of using this issue to gain cheap political points.”

Hochul, in a press conference in Yonkers, offered a similar message when asked for comment on Abbott’s comments about her.

“I will not be taking advice from Greg Abbott,” she deadpanned. She also said Abbott’s New York jaunt was “pure politics” and that his time would be better spent going to Capitol Hill to urge his Republican colleagues to stop blocking long-sought immigration reforms.

Most newly-arrived migrants in New York entered the country in hopes of claiming asylum, a right protected under federal law.

Still, the city is under immense fiscal strain as it continues housing and providing services for more than 60,000 migrants, most of whom can’t legally work or contribute to the local economy.

Many Democrats have argued the solution to the situation is giving migrants quicker permission to work legally. To that end, Biden earlier this month extended Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants in the country, a designation that puts them on a fast track to work permits as long as they entered the U.S. before July 31.

Despite that cut-off date, Abbott claimed at the Yale Club talk that TPS will only incentivize more migration at a time when cities across the country are struggling to accommodate people who are already in the U.S.

“Why should the state of Texas, or New York now, have to come out of our state budgets to pay for a financial problem caused by Biden administration?” Abbott said. “You may be able to expect some litigation on that issue coming down the pike.”

He did not elaborate on that potential litigation.

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