New York City’s mayor is headed south of the U.S. border.
Eric Adams and members of his administration are scheduled to depart Wednesday afternoon on a four-day trip to Central and South America to learn more about migrants’ path to the U.S. and to foster relationships with local leaders, according to City Hall.
The trip comes at a particularly heated moment for the mayor in his handling of the city’s migrant influx, which city officials have said has involved more than 122,000 new arrivals since spring 2022. Over the weekend, Adams’ top advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin urged the federal government to “close the [country’s] borders,” and last night, lawyers for Adams’ administration filed a court request to roll back the city’s longstanding right-to-shelter rules, as newly arrived migrants continue to strain the city’s shelter system.
Adams’ first stop will be in Mexico City, where he’ll speak at a dinner with Mexican business leaders and investors.
Later Wednesday night, he’ll visit the Basilica de Guadalupe, a revered Catholic pilgrimage site that receives 18 to 20 million visitors annually.
After his stops in Mexico, the mayor will head to Quito, Ecuador, and Bogota, Colombia, where he will also meet with local leaders and tour sites serving migrants. He will finish the trip by visiting the treacherous Darien Gap, a grueling and deadly part of the route north to the U.S. that migrants take between South and Central America, and will arrive back in New York City early Sunday, according to his office.
The city is currently engaged in a months-long court proceeding over whether it has a legal obligation to provide a shelter bed for any newly arriving migrant who requests one. The administration’s formal application filed Tuesday is already drawing criticism from homeless advocates, including the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, which are parties in the right-to-shelter litigation.
The two organizations announced they would…
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