‘Disgraceful’: Biden to avoid migrant crisis during Hudson River Tunnel visit in NYC

So close … and yet so far away.

President Biden will ignore the Big Apple’s spiraling, $2 billion migrant crisis during a Tuesday afternoon visit to tout $292 million in federal spending on a new rail tunnel.

Biden is scheduled to tour the Manhattan side of the Hudson River Tunnel project in Chelsea, just a mile or so south of ongoing migrant protests outside the Watson Hotel in Hell’s Kitchen.

But his itinerary, which also includes attending a fundraising reception for the Democratic National Committee in Manhattan, doesn’t list a stop at the three-star hotel, where about 50 migrants were huddled under blankets on the sidewalk Tuesday morning.

Nor does Biden plan to visit any of the city’s emergency migrant intake centers or supportive housing.

The single males — spurred on by outside agitators — are refusing to be relocated to a mega-shelter set up by Mayor Eric Adams at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook.

City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) blasted the fellow-Democrat president, calling it “absurd that he wouldn’t want to visit the migrants.”

This April 17, 2014, file photo shows ongoing construction of a rail tunnel, left, at the Hudson Yards redevelopment site on Manhattan's west side in New York. Amtrak constructed a concrete box inside the project to preserve space for a tunnel from New Jersey to New York across the Hudson River. President Donald Trump called for a $1.5 trillion infrastructure investment in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018. — The Hudson Riveral Tunnel will be a new railway that runs beneath the Palisades.

Migrants who have temporarily been staying at The Watson Hotel since they were bussed to New York from the southern border, wait outside after being denied entry back in to the hotel since last evening, in New York, New York, USA, 30 January 2023. — New York City is currently going through an ongoing migrant crisis.

President Joe Biden waves to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023, for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., and then on to New York. — Biden has plans to tour the Manhattan side of the Hudson River Tunnel project.

“That is really disgraceful, to say the least,” Holden said. “The president is pushing his agenda but he doesn’t want to fix the border mess he created. He’ll sweep it under the rug.”

Holden further likened Biden’s actions to then-President Gerald Ford’s 1975 refusal to provide the Big Apple with funding to spare it from bankruptcy.

“It’s almost like, ‘Biden to New York City: Drop dead,’” he said.

Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (D-Staten Island) said he was “glad the president is here to take a gander at a much-needed hole in the ground but his failure at the border is blowing a tunnel-sized gap in our city budget, with absolutely no offer to assist.”

“Perhaps one of the sandhogs he meets can assist with his buried head,” Borelli added.

Mayor Eric Adams, who is scheduled to join Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul on the tour, has been publicly pleading with the White House to provide $1 billion in emergency migrant aid.

As of Sunday, an estimated 43,200 migrants had flooded into Gotham since the spring, with 28,200 living in taxpayer-funding housing, according to City Hall.

It’s unclear if Adams, who recently bucked Biden by calling the situation at the southern US border a “disaster,” planned to discuss the city’s migrant crisis with the president.

Migrants with all of their belongings camp in front and refuse to head to another shelter in Red Hook. — The migrants are placed in Hell’s Kitchen.

Immigrants refusing to live in any city shelter are camping out in front of the Watson Hotel on 57th Street in Manhattan. — Immigrants are refusing to a mega-shelter set up by Mayor Adams.

Migrants with all of their belongings camp in front and refuse to head to another shelter in Red Hook. Volunteers serve lunch for the migrants. — Local politicians are calling out Biden for not visiting the migrants.

At the Watson Hotel, Jesús Aguais, founder of the Greenwich Village-based nonprofit AID for AIDS International, said he showed up after learning about the situation there.

Aguais, who immigrated to the US from Venezuela in 1989, said he hoped to convince the migrants to go to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.

“They have to move forward,” he said. “We want them to be fine. We want them to get a job. The last thing we want is to fuel the anti-immigrant hate.”

Meanwhile, the activist group Open Hearts Initiative said it was planning a 1 p.m. rally to “stand in solidarity with migrant-led efforts to resist this move and…call on the city to provide safe, stable housing for all.”

source: nypost.com