Abbott hits Adams for migrant complaints: He ‘could not last a week in Texas’

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is knocking New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) for his recent complaints over the influx of migrants in the city, claiming he “could not last a week in Texas.” 

Asked on Fox News’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” about Adams recently calling the Texas governor a “madman” for busing migrants to New York, Abbott said, “When I first heard that, I thought about Frank Sinatra singing ‘New York, New York,’ when he’s saying, ‘If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.’”

“Well, the mayor may have made it to be mayor of New York, but he could not last a week in Texas,” he continued. “They have so few migrants in New York compared to what we deal with every single day.”

Adams has repeatedly called for more state and federal help to address New York City’s migrant crisis, which he claimed last week “will destroy” the city. His office said last week that more than 110,000 asylum-seekers have arrived in the city since spring 2022. 

New York has received around $140 million in federal funding for shelters, more than any other city not on the southwest border. 

“What’s maddening is the fact that in New York and Chicago and D.C. and LA and other places, they put out policies self-proclaiming that they are sanctuary cities, and they love to promote these liberal ideologies until they have to actually live up and apply them,” Abbott said. “It’s clear that the policies of sanctuary cities and letting everybody live for free simply do not work.” 

Abbott began busing migrants last spring in an effort to protest border policies by sending migrants to so-called sanctuary cities often led by Democrats. 

He said last week Texas has bused more than 35,000 migrants to sanctuary cities, including more than 13,300 to New York. 

“This is a day of reckoning for all of the United States realizing that the liberal policies of open borders will not work in this country,” Abbott said. 

When asked about the Biden administration using GPS monitoring to track families seeking asylum, Abbott said, “You got to hand it to Joe, he got the direction right, but the mileage wrong.” 

“The policy should be one mile further all the way across the Rio Grande; it should be remain in Mexico, not remain in Texas,” Abbott said. “… That policy has been tried in the past and was legally stricken down.”