After a Friday pummeling by New Yorkers and the media for the Adams administration's (lack of a) response and management of Friday's flooding in New York City, the mayor's top aide went on the offensive over the weekend—against migrants.
In an appearance on PIX11, Adams's chief advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin repeatedly stated that she wants the federal government to "close the borders." Lewis-Martin also shared that her hope is that migrants would stop coming to the city, and if the City's right-to-shelter mandate was abolished, that migrants need "to understand we are no longer responsible for you, so you need to find other means. Go to another state."
Lewis-Martin then went on to say, echoing a comment that she made at the beginning of the interview, that "we need the federal government, the congressmembers, the Senate, and the president to do its job, close the borders."
Who is xenophobe Ingrid Lewis-Martin? She's a longtime ally of the mayor who has been described as the "second most powerful person in New York City government." Lewis-Martin has taken a lead role in City Hall, torpedoing street safety projects while proudly bragging about not having taken the subway in forty years. She's the one who believes God is advising her and Eric Adams, and keeps giving homophobes jobs in City Hall. When it comes to migrants, she's been unsparing, advocating in meetings with officials for sending Spanish-speaking migrants to Mexico, because they already speak the same language.
Hmm, does all of this sound familiar? Who tried to both close the border and send Central American migrants to Mexico to wait out their asylum claims? That would be Donald Trump, under the guidance of his own close advisor Stephen Miller. The Adams administration, faced with a difficult situation that needs coordination and management seemingly far above their capabilities, instead has gone full MAGA.
Title 42, the policy that closed the border, and the "Remain in Mexico" program, which sent migrants back to dangerous border cities, placed migrants in a hellish situation—at the mercy of traffickers and organized crime, and essentially stateless in a country that could not care for them, for an indefinite amount of time. Not to mention the fact that the right to reach the United States and apply for asylum is enshrined in United States law and international treaty obligations, both of which the Adams administration now seemingly wants the federal government to negate.
But they're not alone—also over the weekend, Governor Kathy Hochul joined in the call to "close the border," saying that the border is "too open right now."
Eric Adams's obscenely well-paid Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy tried to provide some cover for Lewis-Martin's comments, but ended up drowning in a thick broth of word soup that did nothing to contradict her words:
Stuck between choosing for migrants to live in hell or New York City, a xenophobic City Hall is now very clearly telling migrants where they think they should go.
Some links to welcome you to Monday:
- Sure seems like City Hall was fine doing business with a now-indicted tow truck operator who had already been barred from working with the City.
- People are using the cheap Canal Street souvenir license plates to evade license plate readers.
- Eric Adams is slashing programs for teens in public housing.
- The Hole filled with water once again.
- Eric Adams's campaign for mayor comes under even more scrutiny. Via the Daily News: "Three donations to Mayor Adams' 2021 campaign reviewed by the Daily News have drawn scrutiny from law enforcement and election watchdogs after the contributions touched off alarm bells. Two people listed as giving at least $5,000 apiece to Adams' campaign recently told The News they don't remember making those contributions—even though they're named in the city's Campaign Finance Board database as being the donors. A third person listed as an Adams donor denied to The News that she made a political contribution to the mayor at all, despite CFB records noting she did. The public record of these contributions and the three donors' conflicting statements about them are now on the radar of the election and law enforcement watchdogs who say they all raise red flags. No charges or complaints have been filed in regards to any of the donations."
- Wildfire smoke is somehow back again.
- We truly have no idea what is going on with this story.
- Firefighters were caught fighting with each other, instead of their true enemy, fire.
- Crypto wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried's trial starts tomorrow…also wow, this man basically lives in court at this point?
- And finally, L-I-B-E-R-T-Y *twerking anthropomorphic elephant*
