Mayor Eric Adams has had an “epiphany” concerning the Big Apple’s sanctuary status, according to FOX 5 New York’s Rosanna Scotto, host of Fox Nation’s “The Sanctuary Trap.”
“When the migrants first came here, he was greeting them off the buses, holding babies, kissing them, and now he’s realized that we’ve got a problem,” she told “Special Report” host Bret Baier on Tuesday.
Rocked by the unmitigated crisis crippling the city, Adams is now calling for sanctuary laws to be modified so migrants who commit violent crimes can be turned over to I.C.E. and deported.
This comes as footage of migrants attacking NYPD officers in Times Square went viral and separate video captured one incident of a migrant crime gang dragging a woman down the street in front of a Brooklyn deli as they grabbed her purse and sent her careening into a pole.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams says his hands are tied when it comes to the migrant crisis as laws do not allow law enforcement to turn violent migrant offenders over to I.C.E. (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“I think the mayor had an epiphany and realized this can’t continue,” she told Baier.
“People were just so outraged in New York City that this is happening now as a sanctuary city. The mayor is not allowed to have the police notify the feds that this is going on in the migrant community, but I think, as you heard recently, he’s changed his tune. He would like to change the laws so that these people who were committing crimes in New York City would be deported.”
Scotto, who co-anchors “Good Day New York,” has witnessed the crisis firsthand, taking Fox Nation subscribers inside places like the iconic Roosevelt Hotel which, since shutting down during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been repurposed into a migrant processing hub now coined by some as the “new Ellis Island.”
But the hotel, like other locations sheltering migrants, is overflowing, and it’s unsustainable.
“We have nowhere to put migrants,” Scotto stressed, adding that 70 were found to be living illegally in a Queens furniture store because local shelters were out of space.
Scotto said migrant crime has been occurring inside shelters and was mostly “kept quiet” by city officials.
“Now that it’s spilled onto the streets and we see it a lot in Times Square, wherever, they can’t avoid it, they have to talk about it.”
In “The Sanctuary Trap,” Scotto sat down with Mayor Adams and pressed him about the crisis, but he insisted his hands are tied under existing law.
“The law states that we cannot notify I.C.E. I cannot break the law and enforce the law. I can’t deport. I can’t stop people from coming in, repeated criminal behavior, I can’t report to I.C.E. for deportation. So there’s certain things I can’t do,” he said.
He additionally explained, however, that challenges to the “right to shelter” rule, which requires the city to house its homeless, are in progress in the court system, saying, “We stated that it wasn’t meant to be for migrants and asylum seekers.”
Since Scotto’s sitdown, Adams has said the sanctuary city law must be “modified” so that migrant criminals can be deported.
Failure to turn criminals over to I.C.E. has had consequences outside of the Empire State.
In Georgia last week, 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley was allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela. The suspect behind the killing was reportedly arrested in New York and was not turned over to I.C.E.
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“It seems endless to me now,” Scotto said of the crisis. “Even the mayor is admitting it’s gotten out of control. Everybody is stretched thin. Even some of the charitable organizations, who have been trying to help some of the migrants, realize there’s got to be an end game here. It just can’t continue this way.”
Fox News’ Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.