In response to the Biden administration’s easing of key immigration restrictions, a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams criticized the federal government, saying New Yorkers and Americans are “fed up with our system of failed immigration.
Biden’s Department of Homeland Security will launch an ICE Portal app in December that will allow migrants to skip their in-person check-ins at an ICE office and instead check in with immigration officials through an app on a phone or computer.
The app reportedly has serious crash issues and does not track a migrant’s location if he or she is using an Android phone or laptop. Additionally, the app does not check whether immigrants have been arrested in the past or have outstanding arrest warrants and allows them to opt out or challenge government orders to submit to electronic monitoring.
This comes after the Biden administration set the record for the highest number of illegal immigrants entering the country in a single year in 2023, with 3.2 million entries. This surpassed the previous record of 2.7 million set the previous year.
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A U.S. Customs and Border Protection border patrol agent talks to people on the Mexican side of the border wall at Border Field State Park in San Diego on Nov. 28, 2018. (Reuters/Chris Wattie)
Adams has said that New York, which has seen more than 220,000 immigrants arrive in the city since spring 2022, has been “devastated” by the surge of migrants.
Kayla Altus, a spokesperson for Adams, told Fox News Digital that “cities should not have to bear the cost and burden of a national problem.”
“For decades, Washington has talked endlessly about comprehensive reform, but has accomplished nothing substantial,” he said. “In this election, the American people sent a strong message: they are fed up with our broken immigration system.”
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An asylum seeker shows his documents to Army soldiers at the entrance to the historic Roosevelt Hotel, converted into a city-run shelter for immigrant families newly arrived in New York City, on September 27, 2023. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
He said the election, in which former President Trump won a landslide victory and Republicans won unified control of Congress, gave the federal government a clear mandate to solve the immigration problem.
“Democrats and Republicans must come together to pass meaningful immigration reform for the first time in four decades,” he said. “That’s what’s best for the American people, as well as the immigrants who come here looking for the opportunity to build a better life and have a chance at the American dream.”
In addition to the presidency, Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives and won a majority in the Senate in elections earlier this month. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In the border city of Laredo, Texas, Mayor Víctor Treviño told Fox News Digital that he is working with state and Mexican authorities to prepare for the possibility of another surge of migrants before Trump takes office.
He said that while the city currently has “adequate” resources for everyday legal crossings, “no community is sufficiently equipped to handle unnatural surges.”
Treviño noted that the city is not equipped for an increase in immigrant children since Laredo “does not have a pediatric intensive care unit.”
The Rio Grande is seen from Laredo, Texas, on September 19, 2020. (Reuters/Verónica G. Cárdenas)
Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital that other sanctuary cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver are also struggling with the fiscal costs of the surge in immigrants. He said that in many cases, illegal immigrants are even displacing resources meant for citizens.
Camarota pointed to testimony he gave before the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Borders and Foreign Affairs in September, in which he listed the fiscal costs for individual sanctuary cities: $12 billion in New York over the next three years in housing, food, health care and other services for newly arrived illegal immigrants, $361 million in Chicago and $36.4 million in Washington, DC, in 2023, and $180 million in Denver in 2024.
“The real policy that would save cities money is strict enforcement that increases deportations, gets people home and encourages people to return home on their own,” he said. “If you’re increasing deportations and you’ve increased normal emigration, you could really reduce these numbers and start saving some real money.”
Laken Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia, was found dead near a lake on campus on February 22. An illegal immigrant was convicted of her murder this week. (Laken Riley/Facebook)
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Jessica Vaughan, who works as director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital that while the murder of nursing student Laken Riley by an illegal immigrant has attracted a lot of attention, she said tragic stories like that They are not isolated. but rather part of a broader pattern.
“Only ICE knows for sure how often someone who is released into a sanctuary has subsequently been arrested for another crime,” he said. “Sanctuary policies have a human cost and there is no reasonable law enforcement, public safety or even community trust justification for having this policy. It is political and it has to end.”
