How Mayor Adams Handles a Crisis

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Did you hear that Mayor Adams has gone to Latin America today, a three-country trip, Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico. His goal?

Mayor Adams: I want to give the people of those areas a real story of what is happening in New York City. There's a public relation campaign that people are using in these areas to state that if you come to New York, that you're going to get whatever you need. I want to give them a true picture of what's taking place. This country has always been a country that allowed immigrants to come in. We want to make sure we do it in a responsible way with a real decompressive strategy. Then we want partnerships. I want to talk with those, their leaders. I believe we're going to be able to meet with the President of Colombia. I spoke with the ambassador the other day. We're going to meet with leaders in Ecuador, leaders in Mexico and really start having a conversation as cities what can we do better to deal with this crisis.

Brian Lehrer: What is that true picture of what is here as the mayor sees it? Well, we'll hear more of the mayor from his news conference yesterday on this latest effort to deal with a large number of asylum seekers from the region coming to New York. Our chief Mayor Adams reporter, Liz Kim, from our people in power desk at WNYC and Gothamist joins us now to talk about this trip and other things Eric Adams, including his new court filing, this just came late yesterday, to end the right to shelter policy as it currently exists, the controversy over how he and others in his administration handled or mishandled the record rainstorm last week, how he's limiting open questions from the press to once a week, beginning this week, and maybe more. Hi, Liz, always good to have you on the show.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Here's more of the mayor yesterday on how he hopes to talk to the people in the three countries he is going to visit.

Mayor Adams: Deputy Mayor Levy and his team, they are going to attempt to get me on as many of stations, newspapers, radios, TVs in these areas to give people the honest truth of there's a body of people who are there that are giving them false hopes and false promises. We want to give people a true picture of what is here.

Brian Lehrer: How will he describe what that true picture is?

Mayor Adams: We're going to tell them that coming to New York doesn't mean you're going to stay in a five-star hotel. It doesn't mean that the mere fact you come here, you automatically are going to be allowed to work, which as you understand TPS was only given to those of Venezuelan. We're going to tell them what the real conditions are. The large number of thousands of people are living in congregate settings. We know that there is a propaganda machine that basically, it has given the false promise of what life is like of being a migrant and asylum seeker, and we want to be honest with those who live in these regions.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams yesterday. Liz, was this Latin America trip in the works for long?

Elizabeth Kim: That's unclear. Word of the trip first broke when Melissa Russo, she's a reporter with WNBC, she asked Governor Hochul about it during a gaggle on Monday. Then not too long afterwards, probably because reporters were asking the mayor's office about this, they came out with a rough itinerary.

Brian Lehrer: Why those countries, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico? I don't think those are the big three asylum seeker-sending countries. Are they?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, actually two of them are. The city has not been regularly reporting this out, but in the summer, they did say that Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia were their top three origin points for the migrants. He is going to Ecuador and Colombia. As to why he's not visiting Venezuela, the relationship between the US and Venezuela is fraught and complicated to say the least, and the US State Department does not advise Americans to go there.

Brian Lehrer: Ecuador and Colombia, I guess, replaced Guatemala and Honduras because of people who were following the asylum seeker wave over a period of even more than the last year were asked to say which three countries are really sending a lot of people here right now because the massive problems in those countries, they probably would have said Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. I think it's been dynamic, which is why the press and also advocates have been pressing the city to regularly report this out. They kind of give us little glimpses, and they'll say things like-- For example, they've said that the number of Russians coming through the border and arriving in New York City has increased over the summer. I think it's an evolving picture. As to why he's chosen Colombia in particular is he wants to go to this crossing that's known as the Darién Gap. I think it's through Columbia that he can-- He's not going to do the crossing, but it's through Columbia that he can go through an entry point and maybe get some better understanding of what that looks like.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know if he has media appearances lined up as he said in one of those clips that he wants?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, basically, that's what he said. He wants to talk to as many local Spanish-speaking media as he can. His office has not released that yet, but they told us that he wants to do something similar to what he did when he went to Israel, which is every day, they plan to hold a briefing for New York City reporters that will summarize what he did that day and give us an opportunity to ask him questions. In addition, there are going to be media from New York City that accompanies him on the trip. A New York Post reporter tweeted out this morning that he was on his way, I believe The Times will also attend, so he's going to have plenty of coverage.

Brian Lehrer: Is he doing this as theater for New Yorkers or is he doing it to actually try to convince people in Latin America not to come?

Elizabeth Kim: The mayor would say the latter. I think skeptics and just political observers would say it's both.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. The mayor doesn't speak Spanish. Is he traveling with a translator of choice?

Elizabeth Kim: He will be going with his Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, Manuel Castro, who speaks fluent Spanish. Also accompanying him will be the Commissioner of International Affairs, Edward Mermelstein. Mermelstein was actually born in Ukraine, so it could be that he could be a Russian speaker who could speak to Russian migrants crossing the border in Mexico.

Brian Lehrer: What's the Mermelstein's title?

Elizabeth Kim: Commissioner of international affairs.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder if there's any other city in the country that has a commissioner of international affairs or if the city of immigrants from all over the world that makes New York so wonderful in so many ways, no matter what we think of this current moment, I wonder if there's any other city in the country that even has a commissioner of international affairs. I don't expect you to know the answer. I don't know the answer. Do you think the mayor is wrong when he says there are PR campaigns down there by smugglers looking for a fee who advertise in New York as free beds, free food, free stuff to get clients?

Elizabeth Kim: I think that the idea that there's a smuggling industry that's taking advantage of this moment, that's been reported on, and it's a billion dollar industry, but what we've often heard from advocates and the migrants themselves is that-- How do they hear about New York? It's word of mouth, it's social media, it's listening to personal testimonies. Ultimately, I don't think that that's actually too different from the way immigration has worked for decades, basically someone hears of a friend who goes to a place that's better and they learn about it. They say like, "Oh, come here. The transportation is great. There are jobs." I think that that's just the time-honored way that these messages get out to people seeking a better life.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your phone calls for our reporter Elizabeth Kim who covers Mayor Adams. Anybody from Ecuador listening, anybody originally from Colombia listening or Mexico, three countries that he's going to visit and what want to weigh in on what you know about conditions in your countries or the route to get here, which Liz was describing as one of the reasons that the mayor is going to Colombia, in addition to that it's a big asylum seeker sending country right now in its own right, or anyone else? 212-433-WNYC (212) 433-9692. Text or call that number or tweet @BrianLehrer. Liz, slightly changing topics. Can you tell us about the court filing from the Mayor late yesterday on the right to shelter?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. Not a complete surprise. We've known since May that the city is undergoing legal proceedings to suspend the right to shelter. The way it works is because the right to shelter is what's known as a consent decree. Anytime one of the parties wants to make a change to it, they have to go through negotiations. Basically, the city has sat at the table for months now with legal aid and the states. I guess they've decided that they've done all the talking that they can, and they are now prepared to go through with what the Mayor originally stated back in the spring, which is he would like to suspend the right to shelter.

Now, what was always unclear was, what are the parameters in which the city would try to do this? What we learned last night with their filing was that rather than exempting newly arrived migrants from the right to shelter, which was what some people had expected, the court filing says that they would like to suspend right to shelter for all homeless single adults. Just to be very specific they would like to do this under two conditions, when there's a state of emergency, and when the demand for shelter is at least 50% higher than during non-emergency periods.

Brian Lehrer: Did someone argue anything already on the other side?

Elizabeth Kim: Yes. Legal Aid and the Coalition for the Homeless, which are the two groups defending the city's right to shelter immediately put out a statement. They called the city's actions shameful. They said it would have far-reaching effects on the city's poorest residents including working-class New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: What's the Mayor's vision of what happens to asylum seekers without the right to shelter? Assuming many cannot find private housing with people they know or private housing they can pay for. The Mayor doesn't want to allow people to sleep on the street either. That's been an issue in his administration. What does he think will happen? Just that people will leave?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, that's the biggest open question, and that's also the biggest criticism of this approach. The right to shelter has been a foundational approach to the way the city handles homelessness. It's been credited with essentially limiting the amount of street homelessness we see in New York City. All you need to do is to travel to cities that do not have the right to shelter, like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and you'll see what the difference is. The Mayor has always said, "We do not want to see people sleeping on the streets. That's bad for the people themselves, and that's also bad for other New Yorkers." That's the looming question here. I think what the Mayor is thinking about, in the short term is he wants a deterrent strategy. Doing away with the right to shelter or suspending it in this way, he believes will send a message. It will send a message to the border. Basically the purpose of his trip right now, he wants to send a message that you cannot just come to New York, and expect to have shelter.

The reality and how that plays out is really quite different, because if migrants continue to come, what will the city do exactly. Will they in fact turn them away? Will they in fact allow them to sleep on the streets?

Brian Lehrer: In fairness to him, one of the reasons that at least he says, and maybe it's true, that so many asylum seekers come here as opposed to other US cities, is that New York is the only city with this right to shelter, and then word gets out, right?

Elizabeth Kim: That's correct. That is true. The right to shelter in New York is very unique in that it is so sweeping. There are other cities and states that have some form of right to shelter, but it will be for families for instance, or it will be under certain conditions. Like if the temperatures fall below, like go into freezing or something like that. New York is the only one in which it is for anyone who seeks a bed, and the city is obligated to provide that person with shelter, and to do it within a reasonable timeframe.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, on my question before as to whether any other American city has a commissioner for international affairs, a journalist friend from another news organization, I will protect their privacy, just sent a note that says, "I remember that when Governor Rockefeller appointed Henry Kissinger as his foreign policy advisor." The governor of New York once had a foreign policy advisor. The comedian Mort Sahl explained that the job was necessary in case New York was invaded by Connecticut. There's one reason that New York might have an international affairs advisor.

Elizabeth Kim: Brian, if I could just add to your last question. In talking about how unique the right to Shelter is to New York, one response that some advocates have made is, you're right. That is essentially the problem. The problem is that the right to shelter should be expanded and that New York would not have to solely bear the burden of all of these migrants seeking opportunity in the US. That's been an argument that's been made to other parts of the state, but at one point there was a movement to try to make right to shelter national, but that of course failed.

Brian Lehrer: Rahul in Elmhurst on the prospect of Mayor Adams leaving today to visit Columbia, Ecuador, and Mexico. Hi, Rahul, you're on the air.

Rahul: Brian, good morning. Good to always to hear you. Thank you so much for your show. Well, I'm not sure if he's going to Venezuela. I am from Columbia. I came to the stage when I was about nine. When I went to visit my grandfather who was 104, I would see people from Venezuela just walking to Columbia. Ecuador also has a problem. All those countries, because Venezuela, Maduro is doing nothing to help his own people. I think the policy obviously needs to be in place, yet Venezuela, I think you guys probably know better than I do, is the major issue. That's my point.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Raul. It is the largest share of the asylum-seeker population. People from Venezuela I think I've seen around 40% of those who've arrived in New York, and this wave in the last year and a half or so. Liz, do you have any of those numbers?

Elizabeth Kim: That sounds about right, Brian. I think what Raul is speaking to, and I think this is also a criticism of what the Mayor is trying to do, and his message to migrants. He's trying to tell them you can't come to New York City and expect a 5-star hotel, but as Raul is pointing out, it's not that they're coming to New York City because they expect some luxury accommodations. They're leaving a very, very bad and desperate situation. It's not like they're being given brochures to go on a vacation. These are people who are experiencing extreme poverty, threats of violence.

If you listen to some of the anecdotes and stories that have been reported out on Gothamist by my colleagues, it's about, "I needed to feed my family and that's why I came here." I think it's understanding that choice, and it's driven by desperation, not by this promise of like the Mayor says, a 5-star hotel. I don't believe migrants are expecting that.

Brian Lehrer: Fabiola in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Fabiola.

Fabiola: Hi Brian. Thank you for covering this topic so relentlessly. I want to say I'm an immigrant from Peru and I have met a bunch of the people that are coming over the asylum seekers. I'm a reporter as well. I'm surprised to see how many people are coming from places like Peru, Ecuador. Most of the media are focusing on people from Venezuela. I come to think of this and there's a lot of instability in countries like Ecuador. Let's remember a presidential candidate was assassinated just a few months ago in Ecuador. That creates a lot of instability in a country. I think that Mayor Adams going to the border or Panama and talking on the radio. It's bigger than that. People are escaping instability that in a way it's also created by the US consumption of drugs. These countries, their governments are polluted with people that are drug dealers and the corruption is just rampant. People don't feel safe in their own countries and I think that's that bigger than just a flyer and politics in the sense of the US hasn't done much to address that issue.

There's more drugs coming into the US. The consumption has gone further and further and has grown larger and there's nothing being done here in the US to address those mental health issues. How are we tending to addiction here? How are we tending to depression? I think it's just we have to look within and within I mean here in the US. What are we doing to contribute to this crisis in other countries?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Fabiola: That's forcing all the people to come here. Anyway, thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Fabiola, thank you very much. Ernesto and Elizabeth, you're on WNYC. Hello, Ernesto.

Ernesto: Hi. How are you doing, Brian? I think having Mayor Adams go over there to see what's going on, especially in Colombia, and why he went to Ecuador and Colombia, that's very easy. That's the path they will take all the way from Chile, from Peru to get to the cross [unintelligible 00:21:39] and then all the way throughout Central America to come here, right? One of the points that I want to make is that the right to shelter law is just political. Most of these people and I'm now speaking personally because I have a very close relative who went through this, and probably through 12 borders to get here including [unintelligible 00:22:07], which was, yes, horror, right?

It is not that. It is like, "Listen. We can get to places like New Jersey or something like New Jersey, right?" In New York or Connecticut or something like that, where the laws, the immigration laws are easier for them to process. I've been to court with them. I see they're like, "Listen, we're going to make it as easy as you go." Which is not the case in Texas for example, or other border states, New Mexico. I don't know about New Mexico, I'm just saying it. It is not that. For example, my relative came, of her group, most of them are in Texas. Some of them are somewhere else, maybe two or three and this was a sizable number, are here in the East Coast.

Brian Lehrer: Do I hear you say it's not the right to shelter, like free housing?

Ernesto: No, no, no.

Brian Lehrer: It's the large number of other factors that make New York a more welcoming place than some of the border states-

Ernesto: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: -that has got so many people here.

Ernesto: Exactly, and the East Coast for that matter. I've been to court with my relative and the things that I hear, and it's all about getting open opportunities. It's a step forward to have TPS for the demonstrators, but listen, migrants that came with my relative were Chinese, Indians, I don't know about Russians, but mostly South America, from Colombia all the way down. Ecuador, of course, is a passage whether you come from Argentina, whether you come from Uruguay. She said that there was a Spanish citizen, with wife and kid, a Spanish citizen.

Brian Lehrer: From Spain?

Ernesto: From Spain, coming and doing the trek. Lots of South Indians, right? South Asians, I'm sorry. Lots of South Asians, and even Chinese. It is bigger than what we think.

Brian: I hear you, Ernesto. I really appreciate your call, and yes, New York is New York. That's why we have a commissioner for international affairs. One more, Lewis in St. Albans. You're on WNYC. Hello, Lewis.

Lewis: How are you doing, Brian? Nice to talk to you, too. Yes. Okay. Yes, I just want to say it's a big coincidence that the mayor is talking about this or planning to do this trip now when he's getting a lot of flags for what happened with the floods that just happened. When you had two [unintelligible 00:25:16] presidents saying that the response to the floods were not adequate. I'm not saying that it takes a lot of planning to do a trip like that, but maybe they move it up or anything. It sounds like a distraction, because when you blame people saying that if you didn't see the rain, is because you were on the rock, that has a little political-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Lewis, you should be a journalist.

Lewis: No, no. I thank WNYC and Elizabeth Kim for the coverage because when the video came out from that federal monitor in Rikers Island, he took the video and took it to Marshall Cramer on CBS, which was-- If she declare as a Republican Party member, I wouldn't be surprised. He took over there, say everything that was on the video without showing us the video. I'm like a federal monitor on Friday said that what he saw on the videos was so harsh that he had to make it public and the mayor, instead of giving an interview to a outlet, everybody agreed on the [unintelligible 00:26:38] on the Democratic [unintelligible 00:26:40]. They were going to come every week with you on your show to let the people ask questions.

Brian Lehrer: No. In fairness, we didn't ask them to make that commitment during the primary. Nobody made that commitment, but Lewis, yes. Certainly, the mayor is trying to control his media. Lewis, thank you very much. Yes, Lewis is paying very close attention. Liz, Lewis makes the segue for us from the mayor's trip to Latin America back to the rainstorm. I admit I had the same thought as Lewis over the weekend when I felt like we were just starting to dig into what exactly happened in the run-up to the rainstorm that could have been done better and poof, we hear about this trip to Latin America. I assume Lewis is right also to say a trip like this has to be in the planning stages for quite a while, but maybe he moved it up because we didn't know about it before, I don't think but boom, we're just starting to deconstruct what happened to cause the impact of the rainstorm the way it was on people and suddenly we heard about this.

Elizabeth Kim: Yes, you're right. The timing is very curious and we didn't have an inkling of this. I should say this is not the first time that the mayor has at least visited the border. He did that in January, but yes, the timing was definitely interesting. The mayor had a very rough weekend in terms of criticism over his handling of the storm. There were a lot of questions coming into Monday. I think reporters were prepared to grill him on his handling of the storm, but then what happens is when there's an announcement like this, it immediately shifts our attention to this new news event, which is the mayor's coming on a four-day tour of Latin America to tell migrants not to come. Was it intentional? I don't know that we will know that unless someone in City Hall decides to link it to us.

Brian Lehrer: Most of the criticism has been about the mayor not taking the lead Thursday night or very early Friday morning to maybe close schools. Maybe tell people to stay home before they ventured out, to have a personal presence in the media. Not just wait until almost noon, which is when he finally came out after people got caught in it in all kinds of ways. I also see on the Education News site, Chalkbeat, that there was confusion in the schools once the crisis was underway and even once the mayor came out, as he did late Friday morning, based on poor communication from City Hall. Can you describe that?

Elizabeth Kim: Yes. What happened was when the mayor finally spoke to the public about the storm and the flooding, he used this term "shelter in place." He basically told, "If you're at work, if you're at school, we want you to shelter in place." Now, I think since the pandemic, that's just become part of our lexicon. I think most people understand that to mean, "Just stay home. Stay where you are." For schools, that term has a very, very specific meaning, and it refers to a lockdown procedure. When principals heard this word, they were astounded. It was used later in email messaging that was sent to them, and they were very confused.

Brian Lehrer: Like when somebody gets loose in a school with a gun, you say, "Shelter in place."

Elizabeth Kim: Correct. That caused a lot of confusion. They didn't know. "Are we supposed to be locking the doors?" What happened at a press conference yesterday was that school's chancellor, David Banks, actually sort of admitted that they could have done better on that communication. He acknowledged that it was confusing, that that term probably shouldn't have been used at that time. It was voiced first by the mayor, and then the chancellor again used that term.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, and Lewis touched on this too, but this was going to be my last question anyway. As I say, Lewis should become a journalist if he isn't one already. What's this new press conference system the mayor has announced? Does it mean more or less access to getting the people's questions answered through their representatives in the news media?

Elizabeth Kim: Over the last few months, the mayor has gradually been pulling back on taking what's known as off-topic questions. Off-topic questions are the kinds of questions that you can ask about anything. What he's done is he's often tried to limit questions. He's not the first mayor to do this. He's tried to limit the questions to a certain topic at hand. If he's there to make some big education policy announcements, he asks that the reporters only ask questions about that announcement. In many ways, he's been taking less questions anyway.

What he's doing now is it's a strategy in which he's asking the press to basically reserve all of their off-topic questions to one day of the week, where he will do probably roughly a 45 to hour presser at city hall, and all of us get to ask him basically about anything. He's explained this, that he doesn't want any mixed messaging, but for sure, it's a way to basically curtail spontaneous questions that may come up. Now, in his defense, he did say that if there was breaking news, he would take those questions. I think inevitably, what it does is it discourages the press from following him, and trailing him, and asking him those tough, spur-of-the-moment questions on things that might break or news that he does not want to discuss.

It's different if we're asking him about a water main break, but there are other stories that we can be asking him about campaign finance, and straw donors, about Rikers. Those are the questions, for sure, that we'll have less of an opportunity to ask if we're only going to be limited to basically 45 minutes a week.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth Kim covers mayoral power for us here at WNYC and Gothamist. Liz, thanks for all your reporting today.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

 

 

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