As President Trump methodically disrupts government, it’s easy to forget why voters returned him to the White House. Last week we got a reminder: the announcement by Mayor Eric Adams of New York that the city would soon close the Asylum Seeker Humanitarian Relief and Arrival Center at Midtown Manhattan’s more than 1,000-room Roosevelt Hotel. The hotel became, nearly two years ago, the defining edifice of Democratic failures to handle record irregular immigration.
As July turned to August in 2023, news footage documented dozens of peoplelined up around the block outside the Roosevelt, many sleeping on the sidewalk. Nearby office workers brought them plastic water bottles as they waited in the heat.
The photos and videos demonstrated to national voters: Nobody in charge had a plan.
Two failures reflected and magnified each other. First, the White House’s mute inaction under President Joe Biden as the United States saw an enormous number of irregular migrants, an average of 2.4 million people annually from 2021 to 2023. It wasn’t until 2024 that he reasserted some order.
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. Nicole is the author of Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car, available now.
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