 Hello. I am New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and I want to thank my fellow mayors of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston for joining us today. As many of you are aware, we are again seeing a record number of crossing at our southern border. What that means for us in New York City is another surge in migrants arriving at our doors. Just a few weeks ago Governor Abbott promised to send an additional 25,000 migrants to New York City alone. We expect the surge to intensify in the coming days and weeks. Last night, a flight chartered by the state of Texas, El Paso, the fog diverted the flight to Philadelphia, where migrants were loaded onto five buses that arrived this morning around 1 a.m. And just last week, 14 buses arrived in a single day, the most ever recorded by officials at our intake center. We are in close contact with other cities and state leaders across the country who are seeing a similar increase in arrivals. To better coordinate these arrivals today, I am announcing an executive order requiring charter buses, transporting migrants, those often contracted by the state of Texas to provide 32-hour notice in advance of their arrival into New York City. To make sure we have sufficient staffing, we are also requiring that these charter buses arrive only between 8.30 a.m. and 12 p.m., Monday through Friday, and to only drop off passengers at one spot unless directed otherwise by New York City emergency management. Fair to do so result in a Class B misdemeanor, possible fines, lawsuit, and even buses being impounded. We cannot allow buses, with people needing our help, to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night. This not only prevents us from providing assistance in an orderly way, it puts those who have already suffered so much in danger. To be clear, this is not stopping people from coming, but about ensuring the safety of migrants and making sure they can arrive in a coordinated and orderly way. Chicago Mayor Johnson has already taken similar actions to coordinate orderly bus arrivals, and I'm glad our teams have been able to share lessons learned from where and what they are doing. And I want to thank him for this insight in the way of managing assistance and managing this crisis. New York City is part of a coalition of cities and countries and counties, and we know the importance of this moment. We are working together to address this national humanitarian crisis, and that's why I am thankful for the partnership of both my mayors from Chicago and from Denver. I'm proud to be here with my fellow mayors who call on the federal government to do their part with one voice and to tell Texas Governor Abbott to stop the games and use of migrants as potential as political pawns. As temperatures drop in New York City, Chicago, Denver, and other impacted cities, we are calling for the federal declaration of emergency. Financial support and a national resettlement strategy. New York City is proud to have helped nearly 60% of the 161,000 migrants who have arrived here seeking shelter. But we need the state and federal governments help in resettling and supporting the 68,000 migrants still in our care, as well as those who are on their way and those yet to come. Our administration has been meeting asylum seeker crisis head on since migrants begin to arrive in 2022. We have offered them food, clothing, and a roof over their heads, and we've helped submit more than 23,000 work authorizations, TPS and asylum applications, but we cannot continue to do the federal government's job. We have spoken to FEMA and other federal officials who have expressed concern about the border surge, but not offered additional help. We need action and we need it now. New York City is a city built by immigrants. We will work together to emerge from this crisis stronger than ever before. But this is a national problem that has only been exacerbated by Governor Abbott's cruel and humane politics, and that requires additional national solutions. The federal government must take responsibility and lead on this humanitarian crisis instead of leaving it for cities and localities to handle. I want to now turn it over to my colleague, the mayor of Chicago, Mayor Johnson. Thank you, Mayor Adams. Thank you for your leadership and thank you for your commitment to this mission. I'm grateful to be joined also by the mayor of Denver, Mike, Justin, thank you for your leadership and your commitment to this mission as well. Has been articulated in multiple occasions that the lack of care that has been undisplayed for the last year and a half has created an incredible amount of chaos, not just in the city of Chicago, but our country. As buses continue to arrive in the city of Chicago, and all over the country, the type of chaos that has been administered has left many of our local economies under tremendous amount of duress. Road buses arriving, not just in the city of Chicago, but surrounding communities as well. Some neighborhoods as far reaching as an hour and a half outside of the city of Chicago, buses said by the governor of Texas, literally dropping families off in the middle of nowhere. These families have experienced a great deal of political turmoil, trekking hundreds of thousands of miles to get to the border without real care, without real processing, and without a system in place to address this crisis. Since taking office over the last seven months, my administration has worked in collaboration with the County of Cook with the state of Illinois, as well as my full force of my administration to address this humanitarian crisis. The reckless and quite frankly, the unsafe behavior of the governor of Texas has caused a great deal of trepidation to say the least. And as a result of that, we have done our very best to bring some structure and calm to this crisis. An orderly and a humane approach is what's required in this moment. And over the past seven months, we've received hundreds of buses, some in the middle of the night and again some in the outskirts of the city of Chicago, with little to no coordination. I've stood up 27 shelters. We are housing currently nearly 15,000 asylum seekers, providing mental care, healthcare, educating 4,500 students while also creating a pathway to sustainability. But we cannot do this alone. We need more support from the federal government. And today we stand charged and committed to ensure that our respective cities do our part and we need the federal government to lean in and provide more financial assistance. All of our cities have reached a point where we are either close to capacity or nearly out of room without significant intervention from the federal government. This mission will not be sustained, but make no mistake about it. The road buses and now chartered flights is not only unsafe, but it is it is it's inhumane. So we are calling on not just the federal government to provide support and resources to address this humanitarian crisis. We also need better coordination at the border. The state of Texas has a responsibility to connect with municipalities around the country to help address and to deal with this crisis. The mayor of New York, the mayor of Denver and myself were committed to that type of coordination. And that's why over a month ago, my administration implemented an ordinance that provided some very clear guidelines around how buses must arrive in the city of Chicago in order to meet the needs of this moment. And as a result of creating some court, a desire to create some coordination and as a result of bringing calm or an attempt to bring calm, the governor of Texas has circumvented law in order to prove the political point. So though that is unfortunate, we are very much committed to creating a structure that works for the country, but also pushing the federal government to invest in this crisis in this mission. And with that, I'm grateful that the mayor of Denver is with us. I'll turn it over to Mayor Mike Johnson. Thank you so much mayor for including me. Thank you so much mayor Adams for all your leadership and partnership. I will be brief with a couple of comments so much has been said so powerfully by our other two fantastic mayors. I'll just say that Denver finds itself right now at ground zero in trying to resolve and respond to the migrant crisis. We at this point now have had more migrant arrivals to our city than any city in America per capita. And that is not because there is a thoughtful or coordinated strategy to entry it is because we are the first big city north of El Paso and the cheapest bus ticket in the shortest trip for the governor and others who are trying to find a place to send people. We think that's not the best way to handle a crisis of this magnitude. Mayor Johnson has spoken eloquently before about the ways in which this country has addressed other crises of asylum seekers or refugee seekers, including when we had refugees from Ukraine who arrived many thousands of whom landed in Chicago, but they came with federal support. They came with work authorization. They came with a plan for coordinated entry. As a result, they were able to be very successful, similar to asylees that came from Afghanistan, and we were able to create a similar coordinated entry system to help deliver success. Now we're seeing more than 35,000 migrants over the course of the last year. We have more than 4000 that are in shelter tonight. That's more than 10 times the number that were there when I took office just six months ago. And we have incredibly been successful in integrating many almost all of those migrants into the city. But as both mayors have mentioned, we know this is not the right strategy by which to help make newcomers be successful or help make our city successful. And so I just want to join Mayor Adams and Mayor Johnson and say, I think there are three very clear steps the federal government can take today that we want to see them take. One of those is we do need to dramatically increase work authorization for those folks who are arriving in our cities. Many people come to this country, they get paroled into the country with an asylum claim, but they'll come to Denver and they'll have a court date for that and that is April 23 of 2027. That's four years away and in the meantime, don't have capacity to work or to work fast enough. And so what we're asking for is that folks that are arriving and are paroled in come with work authorization so we can help them do what they want to do, which is to support themselves and support their families. The second is, we need more federal support to be able to manage this amount of inflow. It will crush city budgets around the country as we know we're looking at about $160 million of potential costs going into next year's budget. That's almost 10% of our entire city budget. That's a massive impact for us. And the third is, we think if we have federal resources and we have work authorization, we also ought to be able to have a coordinated entry plan by which the country as a whole sets a strategy for where newcomers arrive and where they can be welcomed in a way that we know cities can successfully support. When asylees from Ukraine landed, if they landed a JFK, that didn't mean that Mary Adams made the decision to wear every single asylee in the country went just because they landed a port in New York. In the same way it shouldn't be true that any asylum seekers that land in Texas are at the whim of the governor of Texas deciding where people have to go. We think cities and the federal government can work together to create a coordinated plan for admitting and serving people across the country to make sure no one city is overtaxed, but that every newcomer arrives in the neighborhood that has the resources and the support to make them successful. There is a common sense practical way to address this crisis and we believe that we three mayors and other mayors around the country can help partner with the federal government to make sure those criteria are met. Work authorization for those that are here that need to work, federal resources to support their success and a coordinated plan of entry so that no one city bears a disproportionate amount of burden. With that I'm happy to stop and give it back to you Mayor Adams on however you may want to proceed on questions. Thank you. Thanks so much. Both mayors for joining us today and we will open the floor for any questions if there are any. Yeah, we'll take a few on topic questions as a reminder. If you have a question, please use the raise hand function on your screen. We'll give folks a minute for that to happen now. All right, we'll start with Andrew Siff from WNBC New York. Andrew, you can unmute your line. Mayor, can you hear me? Yes, I can Andrew. How are you? I'm good. Thanks. I just wanted to go back to your executive order about the buses. If a bus arrives outside of the times you identified and the city then either issues a summons or impounds the bus, doesn't that punish the asylum seekers, whether intentionally or unintentionally doesn't it end up having a negative effect on the folks who are coming here? No, no it is not. And we really are saying to bus operators and companies do not participate in Governor's Abbott's actions and we want them to take the appropriate actions of being responsible by taking those actions during the hours that we are laying out. And those asylum seekers that are on the buses, they would not be penalized in any way at all. So no, this does not in any way impact those passengers who are on the buses. Next, we'll go to Dana Rebek in Chicago. Dana, you can now unmute your line. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. Hi, I was hoping I'm with WGN in Chicago if the mayors of both New York and Denver could just give us a bit of an idea of the breakdown in the landscape of your shelter space. Here in Chicago we've seen a variety of warehouse buildings, some hotels that have been used and there was a plan to have winter tent base camps here that did not come to fruition. So I was just curious how we both of your cities have handled that influx and what the shelter space looks like. Mayor Johnston and I'll follow you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thanks for the question. So we have most of our response so far has been non congregate shelter has been hotel units that we've been acquiring to be able to keep people we've been keeping families for about 37 days and we've had individuals 14 days we have limits to those days but we have been using mostly hotel sites we have just about maxed out all the hotel capacity in the city and county right now and so we are bringing on more congregate based sites that would could be churches could be commercial office space could be other city facilities to try to deal with the overflow but that's been our two primary strategies for sheltering so far. Mayor Johnson would you like to give an overview of some of the things that you're seeing in your city. I know the reporters from Chicago but I think the entire country needs to hear what you have been doing there. Yeah, thank you. We have exhausted spaces as well as private spaces. You know, there was, you know, an incredible influx for several months from Texas and we were receiving 2530 buses a day. And at which point, whether it was, you know, park districts or or private buildings anywhere possible. We were looking for space to deal with this crisis. We've also worked in many people in the city of Chicago of course are aware of this but for the nation to hear. We've worked with our faith community as well as our philanthropic community to also to meet, you know, this demand. So we have mutual aid support on the ground where we have volunteers. But we've had churches step up and lean in to provide temporary shelter for for migrants, as well as again, public and private spaces. We've reached a point now of course where, you know, we're getting really close to to to our capacity. And that's why the impetus of this joint effort to speak directly to the federal government as well as the state of Texas that has Americans coming together to come up with a sophisticated approach that's coordinated. That's the response that the people of Chicago and I know that people around the country want to see. Thank you. And, you know, I believe it was very important when the Mayor Johnston from Denver pointed out the capacity based on the number of people that are in his city, because I'm respectful of that. You know, New York has 8.3 million people and we receive over 161,000 migrants and asylum seekers. But this is impacted each one of our cities based on the proportion of the size of the city and the same impact we're feeling here. They're feeling as well. And it has reached full capacity. We have everything from using outdoor tents to outdoor restroom facilities. Some of our warehouse spaces have been converted. We have maximized our hotels, which is coming at a great cost to our city. We've used spaces in formerly used psychiatric centers that are now converted to outside 10 areas. Randall's Islands has a tent as well. We've opened over 200 hotels and we opened up several of what we call Herk Humanitarian Relief Centers. This is really a weight on our entire capacity here. This is a $5 billion budget for this fiscal year and an additional $7 billion for the next two years in the outgoing years. And so not only is it a financial burden, it has also placed a great strain on the delivery of services in our city. I'm sure both mayors will share the same with how it has impacted their cities. Next, we'll go to Saja Hindi. Saja, you can now unmute your line. This question is for Mayor Johnston. I'm wondering if Denver is planning to do something similar to Chicago and New York in terms of when you'll be accepting buses and whether there will be any type of executive order kind of restricting the arrivals. Thank you, Sasha. Good to hear your voice again. Thanks for joining. We are already putting in place regulatory changes here at the city to restrict the arrival times and arrival locations in similar ways. And so we do have regulatory changes to be put in place already to restrict similar eight to five weekdays and to either approved bus locations. So we don't have buses arriving in the middle of the night at one or two in the morning with buses full of kids and families coming off into the freezing cold. And so we, we have currently put those in place and we'll be in conversations with city council. I would not want to expand or enhance any of the potential penalties or or consequences of those regulations, but they are in place currently. Next, we'll go to Darla Miles. Darla, you can now unmute your line. Stand by. Okay. Looks like Darla hopped off. So we'll go to Tim Bach from the New York daily news. Tim, you can unmute your line. Tim, we should be able to hear you now. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, I can Tim. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Question for, I just sort of getting sort of sort out these restrictions that the different cities have. So there, it sounds like there will be sort of different schedules and I need to your city. So I don't know if I have this right, but for, I have 8 30 noon in New York and eight to five in Denver and then for Mayor Johnson, I don't know what they are in Chicago. I was wondering if you can all give what your restrictions perspective restrictions are for migrant buses coming into your cities. And each mayor could share what their restrictions are. And again, I cannot thank Mayor Johnson of Chicago for his leadership on this. And it just shows why this coalition is important because it's best practices and based on observations of what we saw in Chicago, we are duplicating some of the best practices we're seeing in our other municipalities. But here in New York is from 8 38 until 12 p.m. Monday through Friday. And we expect everyone to comply with the operation order. Yeah, just again for, you know, just for context, that the whole motivation behind this ordinance was not to stop buses from coming to the city of Chicago. I sent a delegation to the border to see firsthand what our bordering cities in our bordering states are experiencing. Look, this is an international crisis of global population shift that is taking place all over the world. And, you know, coming up with a coordinated approach, it's incumbent upon us as a nation to do that because, you know, policies have had a tremendous impact on the global economy. And so sovereign states are under a great amount of duress and those economies are being squeezed and and we are impacted by by these international policies that have been that has had a profound impact on the people across the world. And what we've simply have articulated is this that if you if you sending buses to Chicago, there has to be coordination and our ordinance is pretty straightforward. It's Monday through Friday, 830 to five or 830 to five. And you have to give us a 48 hour notice. Anything short of that you will be working outside of the law. And what, unfortunately, what the governor of Texas has done is that he has seen our desire to come up with a coordinated effort. And he has been propagated to retaliate against us establishing structure and calm, sending planes to Chicago or anywhere else that are funded by the government, the government of Texas. These private planes without a manifest without knowing who's on the plane without knowing what's on the plane is not just reckless is dangerous. And that's why, you know, you're seeing all of us working together in constant conversations about how we can actually provide some structure and some calm to this humanitarian mission. And so a 48 hour notice applying for a permit one location that you can drop people off at that's a reasonable set of expectations and it's no different than any other form of transportation that happens in our country. Anything short of coming up with a structure that actually works that benefits what the bordering cities are experiencing and what the rest of the country is impacted by anything short of that quite frankly is reckless and dangerous. And the motivation again is to bring structure and calm and again to call on the federal government to lean in more to provide the type of resources that are needed. The last thing that I'll say, Mayor Johnston alluded to this earlier, 30,000 refugees from Ukraine are in the city of Chicago right now. That's more than the amount of asylum seekers, primarily from Venezuela. The difference was they had federal resources attached to each of those individuals for them to integrate into our local economy. And again, to make sure that there's a real pathway to sustainability. That is, we are asking for what has already occurred. And so this ordinance is an attempt to actually bring some calm and some structure to a very chaotic situation. Next, we'll go to Sabrina Franza from CBS 2. No weekends, no holidays for the same purpose. We have staff that are already working around the clock. We don't want to have people either dropped off at two o'clock in the morning in the cold or need to have staff that have to be on call at one in the morning for to greet and welcome people who are happy to manage the welcoming and supporting but they have to be able to come at civil times to destiny nations that we know about so we can support them successfully. Next, we'll go to Sabrina Franza from CBS 2 Chicago. Sabrina, you can unmute your line now. Brendan Johnson, I wanted to ask about your conversation you had with other neighboring communities, suburbs that have been receiving migrants and speak a little bit to what you established during that meeting. Was it productive? Are there any moves to coordinate with them in addition to the mayors that are on this call? It was productive to think of that question and it's indicative of quite frankly what the entire country is looking for in this moment and that's real leadership and what Mayor Johnston and Mayor Adams are doing and what we're doing collectively is really the response that's necessary for this moment. Last Friday I convened about 80 mayors from surrounding villages and towns around the city of Chicago because as a result of our ordinance and this is something that Mayor Johnston and Mayor Adams have a preview to is that as a result of our ordinance, the governor of Texas looking to circumvent law has sent buses to surrounding villages, towns and cities. It's created a very chaotic situation. Many of you are aware there's a town Piatone Illinois well outside of the city of Chicago. The bus driver dropped off these families and told them they were in Chicago and they were literally dropped off on the side of the road. This is it's unconscionable to think that a governor would do such a thing, particularly as you know as Mayor Adams as are articulated, whether it's New York, Chicago or Denver this entire country between descendants of slaves and indigenous people and this is how this nation was formed and built and you know as a nation that's built on laws for the governor of Texas to circumvent law is quite disturbing and so what these mayors are looking for is a coordinated effort much like what you're seeing right now and they're prepared to pass similar ordinances to again to not just to send the sanctity of our of our nation, but to make sure that we are responding responsibly to this humanitarian crisis so as you know that there are many mayors around the Chicago land area who have fall followed our lead and they have already implemented a very similar ordinances and I anticipate that county government or county governments will will also follow this lead because many of these individuals cities and towns do not have a home rule authority and so we have to make sure that we're encompassing all of the surrounding towns and villages to create the type of structure and calm that's needed in this crisis. And our last question will go to Nico Brambila from the Denver Gazette Nico you can now unmute your line. Quick questions. I know that the previous mayor in Denver was talking back when the sums were just a couple of million dollars and now that the humanitarian response and in Denver is is more than 36 million that it was a breaking point then and and I know it seems that these Democratic mayors have have all wanted to take more of a compassionate perspective on the humanitarian response but what does the breaking point look like. What does it look like. I'm happy to start and let all other mayors jump in. I think what we are looking at is you know we are waiting on and relying on and pushing on the federal government right now to take action as they're debating this budget bill because there are three major opportunities for us there. One is the federal resources to support this effort as it currently exists. The second is the ability to expand work authorization for folks that arrive in the country so they need less support from us when they do arrive if they can work they don't need shelter. They can earn their own money and pay for their own places to live in their own food. And the third is a coordinated entry system that would be able to allow each of the cities and states to be able to share into that support and we think that is what's possible here. So we think those are all give us a path to success. We think if all three of those fail if there is no federal support there's no coordinate entry there's no work authorization. I think cities would have to look at dramatically reducing the amount of services we offered or dramatically cutting our city budgets which has impacts on other parts of city services and so those are the hard scenarios that we know our city would face other cities would face. But we think there's a common sense path to avoid that which is why we're pushing the Congress and the White House for action on these topics to make sure we avoid that crisis. That's our take here in Denver but I'll defer to Mayor Adams and Mayor Johnston what they're seeing in their cities. Thank you Mayor Johnston. What does the breaking point looks like. I could not put in a police class into my police academy with all the success we've had in decreasing crime decreasing shootings taking 13,000 guns off our streets. My public safety is now being challenged because of that. My services of trash cleanup. My services of children's services in schools library hours of how do we move forward with our care for our older adults. All the services every agency in our city must go and look at a 5% what we call a peg 5% finding savings and efficiencies. It's going to impact every delivery of services in the city. We now have a hiring freeze that we cannot bring on additional employees to deal with everything from social services to actually clean in our city. So we're seeing the fallout of what it looks like. We have large groups of people who are not allowed to work who are assembling around our shelters and our humanitarian relief centers. We're seeing on walking the street knocking on doors asking of those who live in the community for different items and different things. We're seeing the erosion of the quality of life that we've improved on in such a short period of time of this administration. We have been impacted for many months. We were able to keep the visualization of this crisis from hitting our streets, but we have reached a breaking point. We no longer able to do that because of the volume in numbers. Just last week, we had 3900 people that arrived here. We are averaging anywhere from 2500 to close to 4000 a week. And if you do the math, you see that's 8000 every two weeks, potentially 16000 a month that we must feed, clothe, house, educate children and all the services that you would give a normal adult. And we're seeing that play out on our streets of New York. And that is what the breaking point looks like, what we are experiencing right now. Look, it's not that much different here in Chicago or anywhere else in the country. The public good is already stressed. Whether it's our transportation system, our healthcare system, our education system, all of these systems are already stretched to meet the demands of families who have been here. You know, over the past seven months, it's been an incredible, an incredible strain on every aspect of city services and to the best of our ability, we put forth the full force of government forward in order to address this crisis. This is why it's imperative that the federal government organize their leadership and actually pass a bill that provides the resources that are needed in this moment. If Denver, New York and Chicago and other municipalities can organize collectively to come up with some structure and some calm to this crisis, we're not ignoring that it exists. We're saying that we have to approach it as a team, not divided. And, you know, 3,500 children are being educated who just arrived in the city of Chicago. Our county healthcare system has leaned in and provided support for our asylum seekers. Again, the state of Illinois has worked to provide resources to meet this demand, but we have reached a critical point in this mission that absent real significant intervention immediately, our local economies are not designed and built to respond to this type of crisis. We are literally building a system as we go along. I commend Mayor Johnston and Mayor Adams and mayors around the country who have stepped up in this moment to demonstrate compassion as we build an operation around the humanitarian crisis that we're facing. What we don't need is a reckless rogue elected official that is not only pointing the finger everywhere else, instead of working to bring people together. This is the United States of America for crying out loud. We have experienced tremendous challenges, the course of our history. This is not something that should break our country, especially if we stand and work together. Unfortunately, you have individuals that their only currency is chaos. And that's why we're looking to bring some structure and calm around this moment because the people of America require it. But also as global residents of this entire world, it is incumbent upon all of us to recognize the global population shift that is happening is not going to end because someone is sending buses irresponsibly throughout the entire country. It's going to require Congress to organize to come together to do its part. We need the federal government to invest, but we also need to make sure that the governor of Texas does not take this animosity on the rest of the country. We are working together to come up with a structure, provide some calm and some order to a very chaotic situation that exacerbated by circumventing law, sending airplanes and buses without a clear understanding of who's on the bus and how we should anticipate and expect those individuals to arrive in. And so, yes, we have reached a point without real significant coordination. This is something that's going to cause tremendous strain as leaders of this country. It is incumbent upon us to do what is best for this moment, not for one political party. Well said, Mayor, well said. And I think that I want to really thank you and Mayor Johnson, Mayor Johnson in Chicago and Mayor Johnson in Denver. And as you have highlighted, we want to thank all those Americans. And right here in the city, as you indicated, Mayor Johnson, our faith-based community, they have played a vital role in opening their doors. This is a moment for all Americans to step up. And that is what we want to do with the coalition that you're speaking of. History is going to look back on this moment and ask, where were we during this time? And I'm glad I have a coalition of mayors like the two of you and others who are who realize the importance of us stepping up again. Thank you so much. And together we will address this issue that's in front of us. Thank you. Thank you and happy. Thank you so much. Take care.