Eric Adams channels Trump in diatribe about migrants in NYC

New York City’s Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, has for years faced criticism from liberals accusing the former Republican and former police captain of parroting right-wing talking points and espousing conservative policies. 

That has led some of his critics to label him “Black Trump.” And he lived up to the moniker Thursday with an anti-immigrant diatribe that sounded as if it had been ripped from the former president’s social media feed. 

Adams made his remarks at a town hall on New York City’s Upper West Side. He criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for his ongoing stunt of sending migrants from Texas to New York, but Adams had particularly harsh words for the migrants themselves, saying they are are going to “destroy” the city.

“We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month,” Adams complained. “One time, we were just getting Venezuela. Now we’re getting Ecuador. Now we’re getting Russian-speaking, coming through Mexico. Now we’re getting Western Africa. Now we’re getting people from all over the globe who have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.”

Adams said that “every community in this city is going to be impacted” by the arrivals, and he asked everyone in the room: “How many of you organized to stop what they’re doing to us?”

He added: “It’s going to come to your neighborhoods.” 

There are sensitive and productive ways to say, “The government should do more to aid me here.” Adams and others, for example, have criticized the federal government for not providing enough resources to help house the migrants, and for not allowing New York to fast-track permits allowing the migrants to work. (That would require Congress to change the current immigration laws, the Biden administration says.)

But there’s a reason Adams’ rant is being applauded by conservatives, who have made a habit of spreading anti-immigrant propaganda. Maybe it’s because they feel they’ve made him submit, or that he has at least come around to their bigoted thinking.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., showed how to make a productive critique in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter. 

“And — once again — if we want to reduce the # of asylum seekers in general, we have to make US foreign policy part of this conversation,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. She also suggested that the White House could extend temporary protected status to the migrants.

I share her critique of Adams’ policy agenda and his rhetoric. It’s part of the reason I think what we have here is a question of authority.

As in: Who gets to declare, with authority, what is truly destroying New York City? Is it the finger-wagging mayor, who appears to be returning the city to a discriminatory surveillance and police state reminiscent of New York in the 1990s? 

Or is it the migrants being demonized for pursuing a promise that has literally been inscribed near New York’s shore?

I’ll go with the latter.