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CV NEWS FEED // New York City Mayor Eric Adams this week said he is willing to work with the incoming Trump administration to tackle the border crisis, inviting fellow Democrats to “cancel” him if they objected, reminding them that leading Democratic figures like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton openly supported deporting criminal aliens until very recently.
“Cancel me,” Adams said while speaking to reporters on Tuesday. “Because I’m going to protect the people of this city.”
“And if you come into this country and this city and you think you’re going to harm innocent New Yorkers and innocent migrants and asylum seekers, this is not the mayor you want to be a city under,” he stressed.
“Those who are here committing crimes, robberies, shooting at police officers, raping innocent people have been a harm to our country,” he continued, “I want to sit down and hear the plan on how we’re going to address them.”
The mayor explained that he “would love to sit down” with President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan “and hear his thoughts on how we’re going to address those who are harming our citizens.”
One reporter asked Adams if he had meant to suggest the city “in some circumstances should cooperate with” the next administration’s U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“You know what’s interesting?” Adams replied. “I want you to all go back and Google Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Google what they said about those who commit crimes.”
“They said those who commit crimes need to get out right away,” the mayor indicated, referring to both of the Democratic Party’s presidential nominees during the 2010s. “That was their position. So, this is not a new position.”
CatholicVote noted last month: “While running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, emphatically declared that she believed there was a need to apply ‘tough conditions’ to illegal migration.”
>> NEXT BORDER CZAR HOMAN OUTLINES PLAN FOR ENDING CRISIS <<
CatholicVote continued:
If migrants have “committed a crime, deport them,” said Clinton, who would mount another failed run as the party’s presidential nominee eight years later.
“No questions asked, they’re gone,” she added.
…
The crowd of Democratic primary voters erupted in applause at Clinton’s comments.
Similarly, in a 2014 address to the nation on the issue of immigration, President Obama said: “If you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported. If you plan to enter the U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up.”
During the latter half of Joe Biden’s presidency, Adams emerged as a prominent dissenting voice from within the Democratic Party, on the administration’s border policy.
After having formerly supported lenient immigration policies, including maintaining the Big Apple’s status as a “sanctuary city,” Adams drastically changed his tune at a September 2023 town hall meeting when he declared the ongoing border crisis to be an issue that “will destroy New York City.”
“Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to,” he said at the time. “I don’t see an ending to this.”
>> MEET THE INCOMING CATHOLIC BORDER CZAR <<
As CatholicVote previously reported, Homan, a Catholic who has served in law enforcement for over three decades, has on multiple occasions expressed that he views border security policy through a humanitarian lens.
“People need to understand, I’m a law enforcement officer,” Homan said during an appearance on a Catholic podcast in 2020. “I enforce law. I didn’t make it up. I enforce laws that were enacted by Congress and signed by the president of the United States.”
“I was raised in a Catholic family in Upstate New York and I’ve seen a lot of terrible things in my career,” he continued in the same interview. “Securing the border not only saves lives in this country. It saves lives of the most vulnerable people that are enticed to come to this country with promises that can’t be kept.”
