( NYPost )
Mayor Eric Adams is heading to Central and South America this week to convince migrants not to come to the Big Apple — as the city preps for a possible record-breaking surge in new asylum seekers, well-placed sources say.
City Hall announced Hizzoner’s international trip Monday, billing the four-day journey as a chance to foster relations with local leaders in migrant hot spots and learn more about the path of asylum seekers.
The mayor will start his tour south of the border in Mexico City on Wednesday before heading to the nearby town of Puebla — where many Mexican migrants in New York City have traditionally been from — and eventually Quito, the capital of Ecuador.
On his final day, Adams will go to Bogotá, Colombia, and Darién Gap, where many asylum seekers pass through on their way north.
But sources with knowledge of the trip told The Post that its underlying goal is to use local news coverage as a media blitz to talk migrants out of coming to New York City.
The trip comes as the Adams administration braces for potentially record-breaking levels of asylum seekers in the coming weeks, City Hall sources said.
Molly Schaefer, the interim director of the city’s Asylum Seeker Operations, recently sounded the alarm about a possible influx of up to 4,200 in a single week, sources said.
The weekly arrival tally has hovered around 3,000 for the past few months.
“There has been a surge at the border. It has been discussed for a week at least,” a City Hall insider said.
City Hall confirmed that preparations are already under way in case of a rush, saying the administration expects the daily count of migrants to swell to 500 to 600, up from the recent average of 300 to 400.
“We are anticipating a surge here based on a surge at the southern border,” said rep Kayla Mamelak. “When there’s a surge at the border, we expect to see an influx of asylum seekers here.”
The mayor’s chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, ramped up her rhetoric on the asylum-seeker crisis Sunday, urging DC to act to address the country’s broken immigration policies — and calling for its borders to be closed.
More than 110,000 asylum seekers have come since spring 2022 through New York City.
Adams has repeatedly called on the feds to take ownership of the crisis while much of the financial burden has fallen on the shoulders of the city.
The Biden administration has only ponied up under $150 million to help with the migrant mess that is projected to cost the city upward of $12 billion.
The White House did fulfill part of Adams’s demands recently and made Venezuelans who crossed the border before Aug. 1 eligible for temporary protective status, allowing them to work within weeks.
But Hizzoner has downplayed that pivot, saying that it only accounts for under 10,000 of the more than 60,000 migrants currently in the city’s care.
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