There was a time when New York City Mayor Eric Adams would refer to himself as the Joe Biden of Brooklyn. Now, roughly a week shy of Biden’s last day in office, Adams used his annual state of the city address to get one more dig in against the Biden administration.
“And when Washington refused to take action on a broken immigration system, we stood up for our city and pushed back while still caring for hundreds of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers,” Adams said at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
The attack on the soon-to-be former president’s legacy on immigration punctuates the end of what has been described as a chilly relationship between the two for the latter half of Biden’s presidency.
It also reinforced Adams’ role in the Democratic Party’s rightward shift on immigration. Adams, who faces a criminal trial in April and reelection in November, has been cozy with the incoming administration, even meeting with President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, at the end of last year, pledging to work with the incoming administration to address the city’s immigration issues.
The city has been grappling with a migrant crisis since 2022 that has put a strain on its resources and pressure on city leadership — at all levels — to work to address the issues. Nationally, many Democrats have embraced more hard-line policies on the border and immigration measures — Biden included. Those who have criticized the party for taking a rightward turn on the issue aren’t keen on Adams’ blame game either.
Among them is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said Thursday that Adams needs to look elsewhere to pin the blame.
“I think that Mayor Adams should check with the contracting work that he’s done with some of the immigration service providers before he starts criticizing what the Biden administration has done,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running against Adams for mayor, issued a report in August detailing mismanagement of funds dedicated to address the migrant crisis. Adams has since been stripped of his absolute authority to award contracts for housing asylum seekers.
“We have worked to secure tons of money to New York state, to the city. I have fought for New York City to get federal funds though FEMA and other programs to help assist with this. But those resources need to be contracted out responsibly. And I think that the finger-pointing in that situation is probably going the wrong way,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
The city has spent billions of dollars to address the migrant crisis. Last year, the federal government dispensed millions to the city to address immigration. Still, Adams sparred with the Biden administration, bemoaning the federal paperwork that slowed the process down.
Before Adams’ speech, Rep. Ritchie Torres told NOTUS that he hoped the mayor would lay out his agenda addressing crime and economic issues.
“The mayor should focus on the basics: affordability and public safety. We have to make New York more affordable and we have to make it safer. There are concerns about violent crime. We saw the barbaric burning of a straphanger on the subway. … He has to put forward a plan for making the city more affordable and making it safer.”
On Thursday, Adams painted a rosy picture of his tenure — one that, in his telling, included having to fight against the Biden administration.
“Don’t listen to the noise, don’t listen to the rhetoric. The state of New York City is strong,” he said.
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Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.