For more than a year now, Mayor Eric Adams has been loudly pleading for aid from Washington in dealing with the migrant crisis. Now, the city’s congressional delegation is turning up the volume as well.

“The administration needs to take action now,” said Rep. Dan Goldman of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Goldman and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand joined other elected officials in Manhattan on Tuesday to tout new mental health legislation. Afterward, they discussed possible federal solutions to the city’s migrant crisis.

What You Need To Know

  • New York’s congressional delegation is intensifying calls for the Biden administration to provide migrant relief

  • Gillibrand is asking immigration officials to open support centers like those for Afghan refugees, which offer wraparound services like health care and housing assistance

  • Biden is also being urged to take emergency action allowing asylum seekers to bypass the six-month waiting period for work authorization

  • Hochul says federal officials have promised to find properties that could serve as migrant shelters

Last week Gillibrand signed on to a letter calling on immigration officials to open federal support centers in New York that offer wraparound services like health care and housing assistance.

“We’ve offered that to Afghan refugees across the country,” she said. “And so we want to make these welcome centers to be eligible for all migrants, regardless of which country they’re from.”

Gillibrand, Goldman and Mayor Adams were among a group of New York elected officials, including nearly every member of the city’s congressional delegation, that met last week with secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas. Mayorkas agreed to assign a liaison to New York.

“What we have encouraged both the White House and the Department of Homeland Security is to come to New York and see it for themselves,” Goldman said. “When you’re down in Washington, it is remote, and it’s not nearly as acute as what we are feeling now.”

Since Republican leadership in Congress is unlikely to provide aid, New York’s delegation is increasingly focused on executive actions President Biden can take to bypass the current six-month waiting period for asylum seekers to receive work authorization.

“Perhaps there are some emergency authorities that would allow for emergency work visas,” Gillibrand said. “I am urging the White House, because the House of Representatives—the Republican leadership—is doing nothing, and they’re unwilling to change the law.”

“It would have to be some extra-judicial emergency authorization,” she added. “And we’re urging the White House to consider that.”

Goldman added: “If we don’t have good-faith partners on the other side of the aisle, then it is incumbent upon the administration to take whatever action it can.”

Gov. Hochul, meanwhile, says she’s confident the federal government can help find space to house migrants.

“I have been in contact with the federal government literally every day of the week,” she said Tuesday following an event in upstate Montgomery County. “They’ve promised that they’ve directed the GSA — the General Services Administration — to find surplus properties for us, or properties that can be used. They are doing that right now. I’ve been checking in everyday to find out how that is going, because that could be an answer as well.”