Mayor Eric Adams wants the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop allocating money to cities that are using the funding to rent buses and send migrants to New York City, according to a city official. Adams’ call comes as the Biden administration braces for a further influx of migrants when the Covid-era border restriction, known as Title 42, expires in May.

Adams met with administration officials, including FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, in Washington, DC, last Friday. He told Criswell that cities that bus migrants to New York City should not be given funding but he wasn’t given a direct answer on the request, the official said.

More than 50,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the city since last spring, some of them bused to New York and other more liberal northeastern towns and cities by Republican governors and local officials from southern states. But what was originally seen as a stunt or political provocation – intended to expose what conservatives describe as hypocrisy among immigrant-friendly Democratic leaders – has mushroomed into a crisis for Adams, who is desperately seeking federal aid. Advocates’ anger over the treatment of the migrants by the city, which initially set up tent camps as shelters, is creating pressure from the left on a mayor who is now threatening budget cuts to everything from libraries to the fire department and Department of Homeless Services.

[Call a waahmbulance, dude. ~ Beege]