This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated March 15, 2024
With city budget negotiations kicking into high gear, Mayor Adams claims that his austerity cuts to all city departments have been needed primarily due to the migrant crisis, along with the fear-mongering that goes along with laying all the blame there, are continually being proven false. Quite simply, the mayor is making a mess of all of this.
Ingrid Lewis-Martin, chief adviser to Adams, countered that FEMA claiming they sent a team to New York City to help unlock the additional $107M in migrant aid is “not true,” to which a Biden official responded that FEMA absolutely did send a team and that they would follow up with Lewis-Martin. This may be a he said/she said situation, but regardless of who is at fault, it is ridiculous that the city is missing out on two-thirds of the migrant aid it should be getting and, quite frankly, given recent history, the Adams administration has shown a propensity for getting things wrong or flat-out misrepresenting things.
During New York City Council budget hearings, it was recently shared that they project $3.5 billion more revenue than the mayor has forecast. Adams’ administration has been very unclear on how they have arrived at their sky-is-falling projections, which they have used as justification for cuts and then reversals of many of those cuts when they say they found money. All the while, the one consistent is that migrants are labeled as the reason for the terrible financial situation the city is in.
The mayor’s Office of Management and Budget recently claimed that they cut $60 million from the school foods division late last year but that it was offset with $60 million from the federal government, yet popular menu items were removed from schools. Budget Director Jiha’s explanation for those items being removed was that they had seen more kids were eating school meals. Besides that being an inane justification for removing popular food items, it still does not explain why anything was cut when they acknowledge that the city funds they cut were replaced by federal aid in the same amount.
And the tactic of blaming budget cuts on migrants has not helped in terms of the vitriol that has been directed at them. During a live interview on Fox News with Curtis Sliwa of the Guardian Angels, members of his group accosted and beat a man whom Sliwa instantly labeled as a migrant who had shoplifted. Meanwhile, the man is from the Bronx, where he was born and raised, and had committed no crime, though he has filed his own criminal complaint and is suing now.
Video showing migrants attacking NYPD officers in Times Square went viral and Adams demanded they be deported. Though assaulting officers cannot be condoned, the original story from the NYPD that migrants were lying on the sidewalk, obstructing pedestrians, and immediately refused officers’ instructions and attacked them was disproven by video footage showing officers initiating a physical confrontation with men who were standing out of the way of pedestrians.
Jhoan Boada went viral as the migrant who flipped middle fingers after his arrest, but it has been confirmed he was not present at the altercation and charges against him were rightfully dropped. However, nobody who vilified him, whether elected officials or media, has devoted the same amount of time to talk about his exoneration.
Despite the claims that crime is out of control, all due to migrants, there is no such surge. Violent crime is down significantly across the country, with the past year seeing the greatest drop in urban murders in American history.
Statistics very clearly show that migrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans. Miami has seen a large influx of migrants and the city had the fewest murders in 2023 in its history. NBC analyzed 2024 urban crime data from cities that have received migrants sent from Texas. It shows that crime is dropping in these cities, with the greatest reductions in crime correlating with cities that have received the most migrants.
Fear is a great motivator but, ultimately, it does not fix anything. We need our leaders to stop inciting fear, especially when it is unfounded, and focus on the recovery that has been underway for the past three years
