Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams took an unusual step to curb the influx of illegal border crossers coming to the Big Apple.
With the city reaching a breaking point as about 600 illegal immigrants arrive in NYC each day, Adams embarked on a tour of Mexico, Ecuador, and Columbia to dissuade migrants from making the trek.
While he didn't explicitly say, "Don't come to New York," he attempted to fight back at what he called misinformation that migrants will "automatically have a job [and will] be in a five-star hotel." Strange how they got that impression. Maybe it was seeing all the illegal border crossers getting housed in places like the Row NYC and Gov. Kathy Hochul clearly identifying about 18,000 jobs available to those who've gotten work authorizations.
But as Townhall predicted, Adams' message appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
In Quito on Friday, a hundred feet from where the mayor and his entourage were touring the historic city center, Carlos Gabriel Hernández sat on a restaurant doorstep with his wife and two young children. He said that he and his family had already tried and failed to cross the Darién Gap but were determined to try again to reach New York. He was puzzled, even offended, to learn the purpose of Mr. Adams’s visit.
“How can you tell someone not to follow their American dream?” he asked. […]
Jhonatan Antony Velásquez Diaz, 33, sat against the glass of an altar to the Virgin Mary. Beside him, his wife nursed their 6-month-old daughter. They trekked for 22 days from Venezuela and were robbed at gunpoint. Mr. Velásquez said that friends who had made it to New York “tell me to come, that a lot of them have jobs.”
“That lifts me up and helps me to keep going,” he said.
He said he doubted Mr. Adams’s words would carry much weight. “No matter what, people are going to get there, and I’m not going to be discouraged by what a politician says or a mayor says.”
[...]
Raúl Alfredo Chica, 39, runs a wood shop in Quito that makes frames for sofas and chairs. When the pandemic hit, his business was decimated and he laid off most of his employees. He fell into debt, then bankruptcy. In the middle of the night in late 2021, he woke his wife and told her, “I’m going to the U.S.”
After a grueling journey by foot, bus and storm-tossed boat, he crossed into Texas and was promptly arrested and detained for two months. Back home, his equipment was stolen. Extortionists paid regular visits to his wife. Mr. Chica gave up and returned.
Mr. Adams, he said, “might persuade some people, but I’ll tell you this: Even after all that I went through, my wife now wants to go.”
Adams' fruitless trip comes as New York City is set to spend $12 billion to shelter and care for illegal border crossers over the next three years.
