Mayor Adams’ latest hapless effort to manage New York City’s out-of-control migrant crisis was foiled by the PATH train.
Adams issued a scary-sounding executive order last week advising bus-charter companies they’d face fines if they failed to give New York 32 hours’ notice before dropping off their cargo of migrants and restricting drop-offs to weekday mornings.
The bus companies got creative, letting the “newest New Yorkers” off in Secaucus and telling them to take a local commuter train instead.
Hizzoner, along with fellow Democrat mayors Brandon Johnson of Chicago and Mike Johnston of Denver, continues to blame Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his policy of busing border-crossers north, which some advocates call cruel, inhumane, and “human trafficking.”
Adams’ spokesman claims Abbott is a Joker-style psychopath who “wants to watch this country burn.”
And Abbott, who is unrepentant, admits to sending some 70,000 migrants onward to other cities.
But just to put things in perspective, 70,000 migrants represents a slow week at the US-Mexico frontier, which since January 2021 no longer exists as a border, in the conventional sense of a legal divide between sovereign states to control the flow of people and goods.
The Biden administration has effectively eliminated the border, transformed American customs and immigration enforcement personnel into the federal equivalent of Walmart door-greeters and flooded the nation with an estimated 8 million unvetted arrivals.
Eric Adams and Brandon Johnson can pound their podiums about Greg Abbott as much as they want, but it’s clear the Texas governor is not the chief villain in this national fiasco — he’s just the only Republican around they can blame without sounding even more unhinged than usual.
The real problem, as virtually no Democrat will admit, is the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Adams has already annoyed national Democrats by criticizing President Biden’s “Who, me?” ostrich routine regarding the global bum-rush and demanding the feds at least help cover New York’s self-inflicted world hospitality tab, which is cratering the municipal budget and turning midtown Manhattan into the pickpocketing capital of North America.
Was it only a coincidence that the Department of Justice opened a public investigation into Eric Adams’ campaign financing — and favors he may have done on behalf of Turkish donors — shortly after he criticized the White House for its handling of the migrant crisis?
Nobody knows what the FBI agents said to Adams when they pulled him aside to seize his phone last November, but the subtext was loud and clear to other Democrat elected officials: Keep your thoughts to yourself.
Indeed, Democrats around the country seem to be happy to stand by with their hands in their pockets while New York City absorbs what will wind up totaling hundreds of thousands of migrants.
You might think New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a fellow Democrat, would step up and offer to house some of the so-called asylees transiting through Edison, Metropark or Trenton, but he seems to be too busy trying to install his wife in the US Senate to draw negative attention to the border debacle.
Closer to home, it seems like a lay-up to get Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — both allegedly proud sons of Brooklyn — to exert some influence on the White House to help their ally in City Hall.
But occupying two of the most powerful positions in Washington isn’t enough, apparently, to overcome border-related trepidation.
Donald Trump’s 2015 call for a wall on the US-Mexico border touched the secret third rail of American politics, which was so secret that nobody even knew how delicate the subject was until Trump tripped the wire.
As the Democrats prepare to trundle their presumptive nominee across the finishing line for re-election in 10 short months from now, they have no time or patience for anyone in their party to start complaining about border policy.
Eric Adams and New York City will have to handle this one on their own.
NEWS CREDIT
