Rep. Tenney to Newsmax: Plenty of Blame for NYC Migrant Crisis

U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., told Newsmax on Wednesday that she’s pleased to see Democratic New York Mayor Eric Adams voice frustration about the Biden administration’s lack of help in dealing with the city’s record influx of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.

“Well, it’s about time because they’re still keeping their sanctuary city policy in place, which means that they’re providing safe haven to people whose first act is to break our laws,” Tenney told “American Agenda.” “Now, many of them claim to be asylum seekers. But if you’re truly an asylum seeker, there’s a legal method to go across the border.”

More than 200 people have been forced to sleep outside the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s migrant intake center, in recent days because of a lack of space, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Adams in June said the city spent $1.2 billion this year alone to deal with the migrant crisis.

Tenney, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said she also blames the crisis on policies implemented by Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Biden administration, which encourage illegal immigrants and asylum seekers to make the journey to cross the southern U.S. border.

“[Hochul] put a record amount of money into the budget this year, in addition to what we spent last year and an additional billion dollars in taxes to the beleaguered taxpayers of New York to pay for all of this,” Tenney said. “This shows a total lack of respect and an abuse of the people who live in New York because we have to pay for these people, and it’s sad to see them there.”

“These people should be in their own country and should be getting their own services there,” she added. “But they are getting lured in either by human traffickers [or] by the incentives of the Biden administration, and the terrible policies coming through by Biden and New York City and the state of New York.”

Tenney criticized Hochul and Adams seeking to move migrants to upstate New York and displacing homeless veterans.

“Now Mayor Adams and others, including the governor, are saying, ‘Oh, just come to upstate New York,’ and put these people in places where we can’t even keep our own homeless veterans and other people who are struggling because of the energy costs, inflation,” Tenney said. “They’ve lost their homes. They’re unable to pay for the rising costs of food and groceries and everything.

“And yet New York doesn’t do anything but raise taxes and make it more and more difficult for our truly needy people to survive in upstate New York, let alone allow foreign aliens or immigrants in there.”

About NEWSMAX TV:

NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!