New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) defended removing students from a high school to learn remotely as the building was used to house migrants.
In an interview with “Good Morning America 3” on Thursday, Adams said his administration did “the right thing” in housing migrants staying at Floyd Bennett Field at James Madison High School in response to inclement weather after he received backlash.
Adams explained that NYC had “always” used school buildings during emergencies, pointing to a fire that happened in the Bronx in 2022, in which residents were then moved into a school building.
“When you have flooding, major storms, we moved them into school buildings,” Adams explained. “When you have buildings collapse, we use school buildings.”
“We’re not going to say in the city that when we have an emergency that impacts migrants, we’re not going to use our school buildings,” Adams said. “Because no matter what people say, if you look closely these are still children, and adults should not ever put anything that’s going to endanger children. Not one child or family sleeps on the streets of the city of New York because of what my team has done. We did the right thing.”
Over the course of a year, the city has received more than 16,000 migrants. Adams has previously come out and stated that there is “no more room” for migrants in the city, asking the federal government for assistance and to do “its job.”
At the end of December, Adams signed an executive order that restricted when charter buses could drops migrants off in the city, requiring a 32-hour notice. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, from Jan. 4, Adams revealed that he would be suing 17 charter bus companies used by Texas for $700 million, saying they had skirted the law.
“Those parents who are stating that we can’t inconvenience someone for one day because of other children, that’s not acceptable,” Adams added. “I’m not going to put children in harm’s way.”
