OAN’s Brooke Mallory
6:12 PM – Thursday, September 28, 2023
Texas Governor Greg Abbott visited Manhattan and gave a speech in which he praised Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul for further pressuring President Joe Biden to take additional action to address the migrant situation.
Abbott’s (R-Texas) Wednesday speech had New Yorkers flabbergasted, due to the assumption of many progressive voters that the GOP and Democrats would never agree on anything.
Abbott is now requesting the New York officials’ support in his call for President Biden to implement former immigration laws and adopt a tougher posture on the matter in order to stop the flow of illegal immigrants at the border.
“This is unsustainable, and those are the words of your mayor,” Governor Abbott said about Mayor Adams (D-N.Y.).
The Roosevelt Hotel, where thousands of the immigrants that Abbott has bused into New York from Texas are currently residing, is across the street from the city’s migrant reception facility.
He asserted that he has only transported 15,800 migrants thus far, a number that the city does not publicly contest.
“What is going on in New York, is calm and organized, compared to the real chaos from what we see on the border,” Abbott said. “Not every day, but every hour of every day.”
However, the origins of the remaining 102,000 migrants since last year are unclear.
If there was any sort of database of migrant tracking, specifically in terms of who and where these migrants are coming from, city officials would not offer clear answers or allow access to it.
For instance, Mayor Eric Adams slammed the federal authorities just last week for asserting that 40% of migrants in the city’s shelter system are Venezuelan and now eligible for work permits, even putting up a whiteboard and declaring that only 9,500 migrants are eligible.
“I just want to go over some very clear numbers, so we can have some accurate reporting because I think there was a lack of clarity on the numbers,” Adams said.
Although they claim to have only interviewed 70% of the migrants already in the city’s care, the city on Wednesday walked that statement back and now claims that at least 22,000 refugees are Venezuelan.
Following a debate with reporters, Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom boldly asserted that these figures are “not a top priority” for New Yorkers.
“I understand that this is an important issue…but please don’t tell me it’s because the public is dying to know the numbers of Venezuelans,” Williams-Isom said.
City officials went on to say that they would soon distribute fliers to migrants, both within the city and at the border.
The posters will reportedly inform illegal immigrants that they will not be given access to a hotel room, that New York is a costly place to live, and that the city will not assist them in getting a work visa.
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