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New York City Mayor Eric Adams told the New York Post's Miranda Devine on Wednesday that the Trump administration's efforts to secure the southern border have provided "real relief" to New York City during an appearance on the "Pod Force One" podcast.
Adams praised the Trump administration's work in securing the southern border, crediting those efforts for NYC's declining number of asylum seekers, and connected his criticisms of the Biden administration's immigration policy to his federal indictment last year.
"We're now down to less than 100 migrant asylum seekers coming into our city a week and that's due to the securing of the border. The Trump administration secured the border, and because of that, you're not seeing the thousands of people coming in, and it has been a real relief for our city," Adams told Devine.
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Adams cited the Trump administration's efforts to secure the southern border as the reason why NYC has seen a stark drop in asylum seekers entering the city. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images, left; TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images, right.)
The NYC mayor noted that the $7.7 billion the city spent on the housing and care of illegal immigrants over the past few years "could have gone to other services in our city," and lamented the long-term impact of "losing" those billions of dollars.
When asked by Devine whether pushing back on the Biden administration's immigration policies caused "friction" between him and the administration, he detailed why he believed his criticisms led to his federal indictment on bribery and fraud charges.
"What happened of this investigation that they put in place… I was in route to Washington to talk about the migrants and asylum seekers when the FBI went into the home of my fundraiser, and it started to unravel a long investigation and I truly believe it was associated with my criticism of what was happening in the city and I just wanted to defend my city and say that this was hurting us," he explained.
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Adams argued that he was being unfairly targeted with "lawfare," and agreed with Trump’s claim that former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice had become "too politicized."
The NYC Mayor agreed with Trump that Biden's DOJ had become "too politicized." (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
"That is how mean-spirited — and that is the level of lawfare that we were experiencing. And that's why President Biden stated that his Justice Department became too politicized when he pardoned his son. President Trump said it was politicized, and I too believe it was politicized," he stated.
"We were moving in the wrong direction with our Justice Department and I believe we should never allow Americans to go through what I went through and what others have gone through."
In April, a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York dismissed the corruption indictment against Adams with prejudice.
