NY mayor visiting Panama and Latin America to counter migrant myths

New York Mayor Eric Adams, is on a tour of Latin America (Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama ), to counteract the campaigns on social networks, which have made many people, from America and even Africa, believe that by coming to the city they will be accommodated in luxurious hotels and quickly find a job.

“We just want to give them a real narrative that the shelters are full and that they will not automatically find jobs,” said Adams, who again accused the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, for what is happening, after having started sending migrants to the Big Apple on buses.

“I have a crisis in the city that I love and I have to face that crisis at the local, state, national, and international level,” he said.

The Mayor accused Texas on Tuesday of intensifying the sending of buses with migrants to New York, where the flow of undocumented immigrants has increased; in 17 months, 118,000 people have arrived in the city, a large part of them Latin Americans, including many Venezuelans.

The deputy mayor for health and human services, Anne William-Isom, said that Texas “has strengthened its bus operations,” during a press conference  with the mayor and other members of his cabinet, although there are those who  arrive by plane “or even walking.”

This situation led to the city having to open 210 shelter sites, including hotels, and 17 humanitarian aid centers.

The mayor warned that, due to the large number of people arriving in the city, New Yorkers will have to get used to seeing migrants outside the Roosevelt Hotel, where the recruitment center where all new arrivals go.

Last July, hundreds of migrants who arrived in the city that month – including a large number from Africa – slept outside the hotel when the available places to house them ran out, leading a legal group to accuse the city in court of not complying with the law that requires it to provide shelter to anyone who requests it The case has not yet been resolved.