In response to the Biden administration loosening key immigration restrictions, a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams sounded off on the federal government, saying that New Yorkers and Americans are “fed up with our broken immigration system.”
The Biden Department of Homeland Security is launching 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 via an app on a phone or computer.
The app reportedly has severe glitching issues and does not track a migrant’s location if he or she is using an Android phone or laptop. Further, the app does not check migrants for past arrests or outstanding warrants and allows them to opt out of or contest government orders to undergo electronic tracking.
This comes after the Biden administration set the record for the highest number of illegal migrants 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 year before.
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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 over 220,000 migrants 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 carry the cost and burden of a national problem.”
“For decades, Washington has endlessly talked about comprehensive reform, but delivered nothing of substance,” she said. “This election, the American people sent a resounding 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 of the historic Roosevelt Hotel, converted into a city-run shelter for newly arrived migrant families in New York City, on Sept. 27, 2023. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
She said the election, which saw a blowout victory for former President Trump and Republicans gaining unified control of Congress, gave the federal government a clear mandate to fix the immigration problem.
“Democrats and Republicans must come together to pass meaningful immigration reform for the first time in four decades,” she said. “That is what’s best for the American people, as well as the immigrants who come here, seeking the opportunity to build a better life and have a shot at the American Dream.”
In addition to the presidency, Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives and gained a majority in the Senate in the election earlier this month. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Down in the border city of Laredo, Texas, Mayor Victor Trevino told Fox News Digital that he is working with state and Mexican authorities to prepare for the possibility of another migrant surge before Trump takes office.
He said that although the city currently has “adequate” resources for everyday legal crossings, “no community is equipped enough to handle unnatural surges.”
Trevino noted that the city is not equipped for a surge in migrant children as Laredo “does not have a pediatric intensive care unit.”
The Rio Grande is seen from Laredo, Texas, on Sept. 19, 2020. (Reuters/Veronica G. Cardenas)
Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital that other sanctuary cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver are also struggling with the fiscal costs of the migrant surge. He said that in many instances, illegal migrants are even crowding out resources meant for citizens.
Camarota pointed to testimony he gave to the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs in September, in which he listed the fiscal costs to individual sanctuary cities: $12 billion in New York over the next three years on housing, food, health care and other services for recently arrived illegal immigrants, $361 million in Chicago and $36.4 million in Washington, D.C., in 2023, and $180 million in Denver in 2024.
“The real policy that would save the cities’ money is robust enforcement that both increased removals, made people go home, and encourage people to go home on their own,” he said. “If you’re increasing removals and you’ve increased just normal outmigration, you could really cut into these numbers and start to save some real money.”
Laken Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia, was found dead near a lake on campus on Feb. 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 garnered lots of attention, she said that tragic stories like that are not isolated but rather part of a larger patten.
“Only ICE knows for sure how often someone who’s released by a sanctuary has been subsequently arrested for another crime,” she said. “There’s a human cost to the sanctuary policies and there is no reasonable law enforcement or public safety or even community trust justification for having this policy. It is political and it has to stop.”