Dem NYC Councilman: We Need Remain in Mexico, We Can’t Pay for Migrants While They Wait Ten Years for Asylum Hearings

On Tuesday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “The Balance,” New York City Councilman Robert Holden (D) discussed New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ (D) floating paying private homeowners to house migrants and called for reinstituting the Remain in Mexico policy because the city can’t afford to provide for migrants while they wait ten years for their asylum claims to be heard.

Host Leland Vittert asked, “[H]ow do you think Texas and Arizona and the mayors and city councils in El Paso and Dallas and Fort Worth and all these other cities feel as the relatively liberal sanctuary cities over the past few years have said, hey, the border crisis is not one we want to deal with, it’s cruel to keep people out of America?”

Holden responded, “No, it isn’t cruel. We can’t — again, we’re a sovereign nation. We should close the border. We’ve got to — [the] Remain in Mexico policy has to be instituted, because it’s — this doesn’t work. We can’t have these open borders, especially a city like New York, which suffered the most after 9/11. We had the most people killed because bad people got into the country. So, again, if you want to apply for asylum, apply, and when the application is approved, then you come in. Right now, there’s a ten-year wait in New York City’s field office to process asylum applications, ten years. So, that means that they’re going to be on the public dole for ten years in New York City. That’s ridiculous.”

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