Why Andrew Cuomo can’t save New York His border U-turn raises suspicion

A group of 20 or so men are huddled on a street corner in the South Bronx. They are the only signs of life in this desolate urban landscape, save for the heavy BQE traffic that runs above their heads. The smell of liquor hangs in the air, but the bottles are hidden. No one wants to be caught breaking the rules, what with the security guards standing just a few feet away. 

The men, mostly from West Africa, are the latest arrivals at a 2,200-bed, male-only migrant centre that opened two weeks ago. Some have come from other parts of the city, where shelters are closing down; others from out of state, with one telling me he was sleeping on the subway for two weeks until he heard about the new opening. “I was kicked out of the last shelter for getting in a fight, so I had to find somewhere new,” he says.

It’s conditions like these that have triggered a massive backlash among working-class communities of colour in New York. The South Bronx, where I visited, saw a significant red shift in the 2024 election, along with several other neighbourhoods in New York’s outer boroughs. This shift has prompted some soul-searching — and shape-shifting — on the Democratic side. Most notably, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has rebranded himself from a pot-legalising progressive to a law-and-order moderate in his bid to become the next mayor of New York City.

Given his clear frontrunner status, Cuomo’s “clean-up-the-mess” campaign has already attracted a number of key endorsements. And with the incumbent Eric Adams’s approval rating in the drain, it is likely that Cuomo will clinch the June primary (which would make him a shoo-in for the general election come November, in light of the city’s Democratic tilt). The question, though, is whether his hardened rhetoric will translate into real policy — or if, like Adams, he’ll find himself trapped between an angry electorate and an uncooperative party.

New York’s migrant crisis is not over. An estimated 44,000 newcomers are still being housed and sheltered — the same number that the city’s entire homeless-shelter system served just three years ago. To date, it has cost the city nearly $7 billion (more than all emergency services combined). According to a poll last month, more than half of Gotham’s residents believe that the situation is “less under control” than it was four years ago, while 32% believe it is “about the same”. Just 9% believe conditions have improved.

It’s true that some shelters are closing, and 188,000 migrants have, according to the mayor, been “helped… to take the next steps in their journey”. It is not exactly clear, however, what these next steps are. No measures have been taken to track or monitor those who have left, and many have been found living in squalid conditions. 

Some have crammed into apartments in New York’s outer boroughs, while others have slept outdoors, on trains, or in houses of worship. Last month, for example, the New York Fire Department discovered 70 migrants living in the basement of a Queens furniture store, followed by another discovery of dozens more living in a commercial space in The Bronx.

“They’re either on the street or selling items illegally,” Robert Holden, a Democratic member of the City Council, tells me. “They’re selling food illegally, they’re selling drinks in traffic, they’re on the expressway. And they commit crimes, because many can’t work.” 

Holden, who represents a district that swung for Trump in last year’s presidential election, says that residents were tired of the “anarchy” during the Biden administration. Border crossings soared under the Democratic president, averaging two million per year between 2021 and 2023, the effects of which are still being felt today. “Everyone knows people that have moved out over the last five years,” Holden says. “They see the quality of life of their neighbourhoods around the city dropping. Everywhere was affected but it hit the working people the hardest.”

Then there are the shelters that still exist. The mayor’s office states that a total of 53 shelters will close down by June 2025, but new ones, such as the converted storage facility in the South Bronx, are still popping up. “No one told us this was happening,” Alejandro Lopez, a South Bronx resident, says, “so now we have hundreds of jobless men hanging around the neighbourhood. It can’t be good.” 

“I want them gone — all of them,” says another passerby. “All they do is bring trouble.”

Over the past three years, city leaders struggled to cope with the influx of migrants into their neighbourhoods. From deep-blue neighbourhoods like Clinton Hill in Brooklyn to more Trump-supporting areas like Staten Island, the message was the same: get them out. But as frustration grew, it created an opening for the ghosts of New York’s past to return. 

Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor over sexual-harassment allegations in 2021, leveraged the crisis to quietly tiptoe back into the limelight. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, he described the migrant crisis as a “tipping point” for Gotham, suggesting that the city was stuck in a “death spiral” — a point he doubled down on two months later. And in last week’s announcement video, he tapped into similar themes. “You feel it when you walk down the street and try not to make eye contact with a mentally ill homeless person,” Cuomo said. “Or when the anxiety rises up in your chest as you’re walking down into the subway … the graffiti, the grime, the migrant influx, the random violence — the city just feels threatening.”

This marks quite the turnaround for a man who once proudly described himself as an “undocumented person”. In a decade as governor, Cuomo pushed or acquiesced to a raft of progressive measures to support illegal immigrants. In 2019, he strongly backed DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and signed the New York DREAM Act, which provided illegal students access to state financial aid for college. That same year, he passed the Green Light Law, granting illegal immigrants the right to obtain driver’s licences in the Empire State.

As part of the first anti-Trump #Resistance, he issued executive orders opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and sued the Trump administration over policies like the Public Charge Rule, which aimed to deny green cards to immigrants using public benefits. Most famously, when he announced his opposition to the then-president’s so-called Muslim ban, he declared: “As a New Yorker, I am a Muslim. As a New Yorker, I am Jewish. As a New Yorker, I am black, I am gay, I am disabled, I am a woman seeking to control her health and her choices, because, as a New Yorker, we are one community, and the New York community is composed of all of the above.” 

Yet the Big Apple in 2025 is vastly different from what it was when Cuomo left office in 2021. Public fatigue with traditionally liberal policies on immigration, public safety, and crime allowed Trump to expand his support across nearly every neighbourhood, particularly in districts with sizeable migrant populations. 

In The Bronx, for example, where there was (and still is) a big migrant presence, 27% of the borough’s residents backed Trump — almost three times the share in 2016. “Most migrants are good, hard-working people,” says Lisandra Martinez, who lives 10 blocks away from the new South Bronx migrant centre. “But there are always one or two who cause problems. If the shelter closes, where are they gonna go? What are they gonna do? We are a close community, and I don’t want them doing bad things around here.” 

This, in large part, explains Cuomo’s own transformation from progressive governor to a law-and-order moderate who now says that he will “work” with Trump. New polling shows that 81% of New Yorkers support deporting illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes, versus just 16% who oppose it. 

But New York’s status as a sanctuary city, combined with resistance from progressive Democrats, has made even this straightforwardly popular initiative difficult to accomplish. Adams in recent weeks has endured heavy attacks from members of his own party for cooperating with ICE in deporting criminal illegal immigrants. Recently, he issued an executive order to allow federal immigration authorities into the Rikers Island jail complex, which prompted calls by House Democrats that he was “selling New York out”.

The question then, is whether Mayor Cuomo would continue in the same vein as his predecessor. As governor, Cuomo was not afraid to take on the progressives in his party when dealing with relatively “safe” issues like taxing the rich, universal health care, and education reform. But on immigration, he marched in lockstep with the Left, even criticising the ultra-progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio for failing to do enough to protect illegal immigrants from federal enforcement. And when de Blasio maintained that city law enforcement would not cooperate with ICE unless absolutely required, Cuomo went further by threatening legal action against ICE during Trump’s first term.

All of which casts doubt on Cuomo’s rebrand as a border hawk. If the Trump crackdown turns ugly, and ICE deportations accelerate, Cuomo may find it politically expedient to return to his previously progressive positions. Ever attuned to shifts in public sentiment (and among his own party), he will not want to be seen as bending the knee to Trump.

But it is not Cuomo or any political leader who will suffer as a result. As Robert Holden tells me, it is New York’s forgotten class: “My constituents are middle class, and the illegal immigrants are threatening their very existence. They’re making New York less affordable to live in and it’s driving people away. For the past four years we’ve been losing our city. We need to get it back.”

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