By Bernadette Hogan, Desheania Andrews and Bruce Golding January 31, 2023 12:19pm Updated
So close … and yet so far away.
President Biden ignored 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 toured 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.
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.
Nor did Biden plan to visit any of the city’s emergency migrant intake centers or supportive housing.
During a speech inside the underground West Side Yard rail complex, Biden made no mention of the migrant crisis while calling the dual-tunnel project a “critical step” toward “transforming the Northeast Corridor” between Washington, DC, and Boston.





“It’s the beginning of finally constructing a 21st-century rail system that’s long, long overdue in this country,” he said. “In addition to getting folks out of cars and onto trains, we’re going to help the environment, as well.”
Adams, who’s been publicly pleading with the White House to provide $1 billion in emergency migrant aid, apparently never got a chance to discuss the city’s migrant crisis with the president.
Adams was the only official at the event who didn’t get a chance to meet privately with Biden before his speech, during which Adams sat in the front row of the audience where he was joined by those who did.

As Biden was leaving, he acknowledged speaking earlier with Gov. Kathy Hochul before saying: “Mayor Adams? Where’s Mayor Adams? There he is. Good to see you, pal.”
Adams, who recently bucked Biden by calling the situation at the southern US border a “disaster,” had been scheduled to join the president and Hochul on a tour of the project site.
The tour was scrapped when Biden arrived too close to the start of the event, sources said.
But Adams got a chance to speak “privately” with Biden afterward, a City Hall source said.
Hizzoner told the president, “I want to talk to you about the asylum seeker situation” and they agreed to set up a time at a later date, the source added.
City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) blasted the fellow-Democrat president, calling it “absurd that he wouldn’t want to visit the migrants.”
“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, paraphrasing a newspaper headline of the time.
Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R-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.
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.
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.”