New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on Tuesday that his office had already had “indirect” conversations with Vice President Kamala Harris’ team and the presumptive Democratic nominee will soon release a plan on how to deal with the border crisis.
Harris was endorsed by President Biden as his successor after he announced that he would not stand for re-election on Sunday. Adams, who has been dealing with an overwhelming surge of migrants into the sanctuary city, was asked if he had been in touch with Harris.
“We’ve had indirect conversations with her team and I believe she’s going to roll out her plan on what she wants to do around this border crisis,” he said.
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Immigration and the ongoing crisis at the southern border are likely to be top issues in the months ahead, consistently showing up as an issue of importance for voters.
Harris was tasked by Biden in 2021 with leading the diplomatic outreach to tackle the “root causes” of migration in the Northern Triangle countries. It led to her being dubbed the “border czar” by Republicans, although the White House has rejected that description.
The Biden administration has pinned the blame for the crisis on Republicans in Congress for not having approved funding and reforms to what it says is a “broken” system.
The White House said recently that since an executive order by Biden was announced in June to limit entries into the U.S., encounters overall have decreased by more than 50%, and the number of releases has decreased by 70%. Officials also say the administration has removed and returned more than 50,000 individuals to more than 100 countries.
“While the president’s action has led to significant results, it is clear that the only lasting solution to the challenges we are seeing on our border – the solution that would deliver additional authorities, resources, and personnel that we need to secure our border – is through congressional action,” an official said.
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But Republicans have blamed the crisis on the administration’s “open border” policies and have recently tried to link Harris to the actions taken by the administration.
“Candidates should not be shy about aggressively tying their opponents to Kamala Harris’ extreme agenda,” a National Republican Senatorial Campaign memo said this week.
Adams has been at times critical of the administration and has called for more federal action and more funding for states and cities receiving migrants in large numbers. On Tuesday, he said the White House should resurrect a bipartisan Senate package introduced earlier this year, and also praised recent executive action taken by Biden.
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“I think it was a great start… some of these executive orders that have come out of the White House, they have been extremely helpful, and I think we need to brush off that bipartisan plan and say it’s time to implement it and move forward, but the most important thing we could do is let people work.”
He also had his own suggestions, including the creation of a “decompression czar” to manage migrant destinations.
“People who are coming in for the most part are paroled into the country. At that level, there should be a decompression czar. We should identify our municipalities who are losing populations, we have places in this country who are losing population, we should identify those places, and we should tell those we are paroling in, you go there for three years, deal with those population issues, employment issues and after three years, you can travel throughout the country,” he said.
“We can turn this crisis into an opportunity if we manage it and not allow it to manage us.”
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