Adams Filings Contradict His Claim He Paid for Foreign Trips

Back in October, Mayor Eric Adams’ made very clear that he was personally footing the bill for a trip to Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia to take a “boots on the ground” look at the tide of migrants flowing across the border and winding up in Gotham.

“The cost of this trip, I’m paying my own way, and you know my rule: my dime, my time, don’t whine,” he told reporters during his weekly media briefing on Oct. 3, 2023.

He repeated his claim about the payments the following week after returning from the trip.

“Our entire team picked up their own costs except for Kayla, who was dealing with media. Kayla had to come down to deal with, you know, part of the role of the media,” he said about his deputy press secretary. “But Tim Pearson paid his own way, I paid my own way, Ed Mermelstein paid his own way. You know, the team picked up their own costs.”

Financial disclosures released Monday by the city Conflicts of Interest board tell a more complicated tale.

In fact, much of Mayor Eric Adams’s October 2023 trip south of the border was paid for by a nonprofit and in part by the Colombian government.

The mayor traveled to the countries in early October as part of an “ asylum seeker fact finding mission ” as New York City continued to see an influx of migrants coming to the city.

The air fare, accommodations and ground transportation for the first leg of his trip, to Mexico City, was paid for by the North Capital Forum event put on by the U.S. Mexico Foundation, a non-profit group run by U.S. and Mexican business leaders, according to the financial filings.

While there, the mayor participated in the Empire State of Mind: Local Leadership in Driving Prosperity and Cooperation panel.

And his security costs plus ground and air transportation during his visit to Colombia — where he saw the entrance to the Darien Gap but did not end up traveling there due to security concerns — was funded by that country’s government, the filings show. The air transportation, spokesperson Fabien Levy clarified Monday, was for a helicopter ride but not the flight to Colombia.

Both separately cost between $1,000 and $4,999.

Asked by THE CITY at a press conference Monday about who paid for the trips — including quoting the mayor from a previous briefing — Levy interjected to say the quote referred to the mayor’s 2022 visit to Qatar.

Adams proceeded to refer to a completely different trip, to the annual SOMOS Conference.

“I was in Puerto Rico on my time, my dime, Puerto Rico,” he said.

The mayor declined to clarify when asked following the briefing.

In emails after the briefing, Levy pointed out that the Daily News had reported on the U.S. Mexico Foundation paying for some part of the trip. In his view, this meant it “was made clear to the press the day we announced the trip” that the mayor’s “commercial flight to Mexico and his hotel were paid for by the sponsors of that leg of the trip.”

A day after The News reported on the Mexico funding, the mayor made his statement about paying for the entire trip out of his own pocket — a statement he then repeated a week later after he’d returned.

Levy also said on Monday that Mermelstein and Pearson paid for their hotel stays and air fare during the trip.

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