Eric Adams Fiddles While NYC Burns From Migrant Crisis

September 15, 2023

By Matt O’Brien

Gothamites have finally gotten fed up with Mayor Adams’ handling of the ongoing migrant crisis, New York Post is reporting. In fact, pro- and anti-migration protesters recently came to blows in front of Gracie Mansion.

That’s not surprising. It isn’t like New York had no reason to see this coming. Mayor Ed Koch declared it a sanctuary city way back in the 1980s, with the firm support of the Big Apple’s voters. In Oct. 2017, the New York City Council passed Intro 1568-2017, which prohibits the use of any city resources to assist in federal immigration enforcement. But despite all this goodwill toward illegal immigration, the Adams administration has bungled the so-called “migrant crisis” since day one. 

At this point, it’s a safe bet that the vast majority of New Yorkers have had more than enough of migrants behaving badly. National Review recently published a story about the Manhattan neighborhood surrounding the Stratford Arms Hotel on West 70th Street. Mayor Adams and his merry band of anti-border buffoons decided to repurpose the aging residential hotel, which had previously served as a music school dormitory and housing for the disabled, and move in several hundred recently arrived illegal aliens. And, right on cue, the migrants started a taxpayer-funded orgy of sex, drugs and rock and roll that played out in other New York City hotels used to house migrants. 

Many of the migrants promptly acquired mopeds, failed to register them, and began parking them on sidewalks. Others began smoking marijuana and having sex in public. And still others have displayed overt aggression to longtime residents of the neighborhood. Disorder prevails, and the police — once a rare sight in this area — are now an everyday presence.

This is the exact same pattern that has played out across New York City. When migrants were moved into the luxury $500/night Row Hotel, it devolved into “a free for all of drugs, sex and violence” that, according to a former employee, “should be shut down,” the Daily Mail reported.

The neighborhood around the Mid-Town Stewart Hotel has suffered from the same problems. In January two migrants assaulted another, who promptly stabbed the attackers and ten additional migrants were arrested after a melee that broke out in May. Residents of the Long Island City neighborhood said migrants were “ruining their neighborhood,” which was marked by litter and public drinking, as soon as migrants were moved into the four-star Collective Paper Factory Hotel, according to the Post.

Ironically, it’s exactly these types of littering, public drunkenness, loitering and public affray offenses that former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and NYPD Chief William Bratton eliminated, bringing peace to the city with their “Broken Windows” policing methods. Sadly, these types of quality of life offenses have come surging back with the migrants. And Adams, who was an NYPD officer in the Broken Windows era, seems perfectly content to ignore them in order to perpetuate a pro-migrant, anti-border agenda.

So, why are some New Yorkers still protesting on behalf of migrants? Because some people simply can’t comprehend reality, even when it smacks them in the face like a fly ball coming out of the sun. There is a mythical narrative that travels along with the current migrants, that they are all precious resources for the United States — diamonds in the rough just waiting to be discovered.

As Ann Coulter has put it, advocates for illegal aliens have force-fed the American public a myth that requires treating “every non-American as better than an American — a potential valedictorian, Medal of Honor winner and Nobel Prize recipient.” But as soon as the latest beneficiaries of Biden’s border-jumping free-for-all arrived in the United States, they seemed to begin engaging in the very types of criminal behavior that they all claim to be fleeing.

While the anti-borders fantasists still insist that all migrants are wonderful, it’s pretty obvious that everyday New Yorkers are now asking themselves a number of serious questions that the anti-borders crowd simply won’t contemplate: Is it possible that the countries the migrants came from are a mess because the migrants behaved the same way at home that they have in New York? If refusing to tolerate quality of life offenses from Americans made life in New York safe and prosperous, why would we ignore such crimes when committed by foreign border jumpers who shouldn’t be here in the first place? Should we secure the border and send many of these illegal migrants home?

However, even as their utopian fantasy has been destroyed by reality, sanctuary advocates have still refused to ask themselves whether they had it all backwards. And, instead of fixing the problem, Adams begs the Biden administration for help, all the while ignoring that fact that Team Biden caused this mess in the first place by flinging the gate wide open. If you smell smoke and hear violin music, it may just be Nero’s ghost descending upon Great Gotham.

Matt O’Brien is the director investigations at the Immigration Reform Law Institute and the co-host of IRLI’s podcast “No Border, No Country.” Immediately prior to working for IRLI he served as an immigration judge. He has nearly 30 years of experience in immigration law and policy, having held numerous positions within the Department of Homeland Security.

Also published at Daily Caller and MSN.com, September 15, 2023.