As mayor of New York Metropolis and a former police officer for 22 years, preserving New Yorkers secure is my prime precedence and it has been our administration’s North Star. Once I entered this position, my job was to assist our metropolis get better from the adverse results of COVID — most significantly, to deliver crime down. In consequence, total crime was down throughout New York Metropolis final 12 months, and now we have now had three straight months of double-digit declines in main crimes.
Tomorrow, I shall be testifying earlier than the USA Congress on how underneath our administration’s management, New York Metropolis can proceed to cut back crime, at the same time as a “sanctuary metropolis,” and the way big-city mayors can add sense again into governing.
It begins with standing agency in rejecting the misperception {that a} “sanctuary metropolis” classification means our metropolis will ever be a secure haven for violent criminals.
We should proceed to make sure that those that commit violent crimes, irrespective of long-time residents or new arrivals, are held accountable and that the general public is stored secure. Being a “sanctuary metropolis” additionally doesn’t give New York Metropolis the authority to violate federal immigration legal guidelines. On the contrary, New York Metropolis will all the time adjust to metropolis, state, and federal legal guidelines, because it does now.
Second, we should acknowledge that law-abiding immigrants in New York have performed an necessary position in our society. Immigrant New Yorkers, together with those that are undocumented, pay billions of {dollars} in taxes and contribute billions extra in spending energy to our economic system. Immigrants additionally play an important position within the functioning of town; this was on full show throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The varied immigrant residents of our metropolis labored to maintain town shifting whereas many different New Yorkers have been in a position to shelter in place and work remotely. Hospitals, the meals business, and lots of different companies have been in a position to operate due to the dedication of our immigrant inhabitants.
Lastly, we should perceive how — regardless of a patchwork of legal guidelines on the federal, state, and metropolis ranges — we should all nonetheless work collectively to resolve what’s been an issue decades-in-the-making. I’ve constantly mentioned, “I’ll work with the federal authorities, not struggle with them.”
That’s as a result of, as mayor, I don’t management who enters or stays in our nation, however I do need to handle the inhabitants that’s inside our metropolis. As a way to perform this operate with out having long-term adverse ramifications, I have to create an environment that permits each law-abiding resident, documented or not, to entry very important providers with out worry of being turned over to federal authorities.
I can not have a metropolis the place dad and mom are afraid to ship their youngsters to high school or the place youngsters are sleeping on the streets — creating the potential for baby exploitation and intercourse trafficking. If an undocumented individual refuses to hunt medical care till they’ve a medical emergency, our metropolis’s well being care system shall be strained. And if an undocumented particular person witnesses a criminal offense however is afraid to name 911 for worry of being turned over to federal authorities, criminals will roam free.
As a former police officer, I’ve seen firsthand the harm that may be carried out when somebody is simply too afraid to hunt out the police. Early in my profession, I responded to a person who was calling out for assist. We caught the suspect however when it got here to filling out the police report, the person — an undocumented man from China — mentioned he didn’t need to file a report and put a goal on his again with federal immigration authorities.
Almost 4 many years later, our nation nonetheless has not handed complete immigration reform and, in consequence, New York Metropolis was hit with the most important humanitarian disaster in our metropolis’s historical past during the last three years.
Because the spring of 2022, our metropolis has seen over 232,000 migrants arrive in our metropolis asking for shelter — that’s a inhabitants bigger than Rochester, N.Y., Columbus, Ohio, and Tallahassee, Fl.
However because of our expert administration and sensible insurance policies that carried out restrictions on how lengthy asylum seekers can keep in our care, and complete border insurance policies we vigorously advocated for, we’ve managed to assist over 188,000 migrants take the following steps of their journeys.
And between June 2024 and June 2025, we can have closed 53 emergency migrant shelters because of our exit insurance policies, permitting us to show the web page on this disaster, which now we have largely shouldered on our personal, and save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
And think about this: when the unprecedented worldwide migrant disaster arrived at New York Metropolis’s entrance door step, federal regulation didn’t enable me to cease buses from getting into New York Metropolis and state regulation required me to supply all in our metropolis with housing and meals and to teach youngsters. We complied with these authorized necessities and nonetheless managed the humanitarian disaster with care and compassion, whereas on the identical time bringing down crime, recovering our economic system, and stopping any baby from being compelled to sleep on the streets.
However, we, nor any metropolis throughout the nation, can do it alone. Complete immigration reform is lengthy overdue, and one thing I, and others, have been calling for. Whereas the answer just isn’t inside my management, as a mayor, I’m dedicated to working with federal officers — irrespective of who’s president — to go after violent gangs and those that hurt residents of our metropolis, and I implore everybody, whether or not a big-city mayor or some other elected official, to affix us in following swimsuit.
Adams is the Mayor of New York Metropolis.
