New York City is, as we never tire of hearing, a “city of immigrants”. There is a certain statistical basis for this claim, as roughly 37% of the city’s population was born abroad, and about one in seven is not a US citizen. The impressive Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbour, and through some mysterious alchemy of the national imagination, this monument to freedom has been reinterpreted as a symbol of eternal, unfettered immigration.

Over the last two years, the worsening migrant crisis has threatened this rather saccharine image, even if most Democrats pretend otherwise. One Democrat, though, has emerged as an unusual voice of reason on the migrant question: NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Just this week, he challenged the “no borders” crowd by demanding changes to the city’s “sanctuary” policy, which imposes an absolute restriction on cooperation with federal immigration authorities. He said he doesn’t even want to wait for migrants who have committed crimes in New York City — numbering some 60,000 — to be processed through the courts, but would instead like them turned over for deportation immediately. “My position is people who commit crimes in our city,” Adams explained, “you have abdicated your right to be in our city.”

He has since signalled his eagerness to work with the incoming Donald Trump administration, which will surely raise cries of outrage from the city’s shaken political class. But it is also what New York desperately needs — currently, migrants are costing more than $2 billion a year to house and feed, and significantly contributing to the rise in violent crime across the city. Street prostitution in Queens, staffed by migrant women and overseen by criminal gangs, has grown massively. Robbery by moped — common in Latin America but until recently unheard of in New York — has become a new feature of city life. Some 40,000 migrant children have enrolled in city schools, which have seen shrinking enrolment since the pandemic. But the new students, many of whom speak no English, offer significant challenges to the sclerotic city school system, which is already failing to teach a majority of its pupils.

Adams is facing federal corruption charges that some suggest are punishment for embarrassing Joe Biden over the migrant crisis. Over a year ago, he warned that an untrammelled flow of poor migrants, coupled with the city’s perverse “right to shelter” policy, would “destroy New York”. He openly asked for — and did not receive — assistance from the White House in covering the cost of Biden’s border folly. He also stood up against the immensely well-funded and powerful Legal Aid Society and insisted on reforms to the decades-old automatic shelter policy.