New York City , where nearly 200,000 migrants have arrived seeking assistance since mid-2022, has spent more than $5 billion responding to the Biden border crisis .
The city has housed, fed, and clothed upward of 212,000 migrants who entered the United States illegally by crossing the southern border, making it the hardest-hit city nationwide as migrants look to resettle in a welcoming place while they navigate immigration court proceedings that are years down the road.
The NYC Humanitarian Crisis Response Tracker showed Wednesday that the five boroughs spent $4.8 billion responding to the influx of migrants in fiscal 2023 and 2024, which run from July through June.
A New York Post report Wednesday morning estimated the city has likely spent more than $112 million since July 1, the first six weeks of fiscal 2025. That would bring the grand total in expenditures to more than $5 billion.
The city spent more than double in 2024, $3.43 billion, compared to $1.45 billion in 2023. Between both years, NYC forked over nearly $2 billion on housing, rent, and “initial outfitting.”
Services and supplies commanded another $1.9 billion, followed by $488 million in information technology and administrative costs. Food costs totaled $345 million, followed by medical costs, which totaled $124 million.
NYC’s Health and Hospitals Department and the NYC Department of Homeless Services both spent nearly $4 billion, making them the biggest spenders across the city government.
The city has set up more than 200 impromptu shelters to house migrants due to space shortages in homeless shelters. It also spent tens of millions of dollars to take over hotels, including the City View Inn, Springhill Suites by Marriott, and the Roosevelt Hotel, among others.
Initially, the city was operating under its Right to Shelter law, which guaranteed a bed to anyone who sought one. It later backed down and imposed caps on how long people could remain in city-funded housing.
The influx of migrants from the border was, in part, a result of Gov. Greg Abbott's (R-TX) decision to provide migrants in Texas with free bus transportation to NYC to alleviate the burden on public transportation systems amid the mass crossings and releases into Texas border towns.
Since April 2022, Texas has bussed 45,900 migrants to NYC, roughly 1-in-5 of the 212,000 migrants who have arrived in NYC. Others have flown into the city or taken trains and buses.
The minority leader of the New York City Council, Republican Joseph Borelli of Staten Island, testified before the House Homeland Security Committee last September that the city, at the time, had anticipated spending $12 billion over three years.
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The number of migrants coming across the southern border has declined significantly since peaking last December. Back then, Border Patrol agents arrested nearly 250,000 for attempting to illegally enter the country from Mexico.
In July, preliminary data obtained by the Washington Examiner revealed that migrant arrests were below 60,000. The drop in crossings means fewer new arrivals seeking help in cities across the country.
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