Immigration

‘Taxpayers Are Being Taken To The Cleaners’: NYC Is Paying Millions To Do Migrants’ Laundry

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New York City is spending millions on contracts to clean migrants’ dirty laundry as the city struggles to cope with the influx of people from the southern border, The New York Post reported.

Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ administration spent at least $11.6 million directly on cleaning services for migrants, though the total amount is unknown, according to the Post. An additional $23 million is tied up in contracts that include laundry processing, as well as staffing and security expenses.

“Taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners,” Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossell told the Post. “That’s a lot of dough to spend on laundry. We should be spending that money elsewhere. It’s one more reason the migrant crisis has to come to an end.”

“The state and city are treating us like chumps,” Queens Councilman Robert Holden said to the Post. “We have to do our laundry. Migrants should have to go to the laundromat like the rest of us.”

The city did not dispute the laundry costs, according to the Post. New York Councilwoman Gale Brewer said that the  laundry costs between $1.50 and $3 a pound, while city officials said that the average cost in the contracts were $2 a pound.

“It’s expensive. All of it is expensive,” a representative for the mayor said.

On the ground meeting with leaders and locals in Ecuador to discuss solutions to the migrant crisis. pic.twitter.com/lbkSHG65JR

— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) October 6, 2023

New York has spent $2.26 billion on assisting migrants in the 2023 fiscal year, according to the Post. The city projects accommodating the influx of migrants will cost it $12.2 billion by the end of next year, NBC 4 New York reported.

Adams has requested additional aid from the Biden administration to cope with the strain placed on his city by the more than 100,000 migrants that have arrived in the city since spring 2022, according to NBC 4 New York.

A Siena College poll released Oct. 24 found that 64% of New Yorkers disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant crisis in their city, according to the Post. Approximately four in ten NYC residents support the construction of a border wall, the Post reported.

NYC distributed flyers at the border and in NYC, itself, in July encouraging migrants to go somewhere else.

“New York City’s resources are exhausted,” the flyer said. “NYC is one of the most expensive cities in the world; you are better off going to a more affordable city.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.