Former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo lambasted the state of immigration in his "Real Time" appearance on Friday, saying Biden-era border policy has not only hurt the country but the people flooding into it.
"His immigration policy was a mistake, right?" Cuomo argued on comedian Bill Maher's HBO show. "I get the theory of the extreme Left: We’re a land of immigrants, let everyone come in, we all came as immigrants. I get it. But how you do it makes all the difference in the world, right?"
He continued to lament how the migrant crisis has overwhelmed American cities in the past few years.
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"To just open the borders with no plan, you don’t know where they go, you don’t know who’s going to pay for them, they wind up in cities all across the country. New York has a couple of hundred thousand in hotels, costing New York City a fortune, no jobs, no training, no help assimilating into society," he said. "So who did you even help? Right? It was a great theory."
Maher noted the shift in messaging from New York's current governor, Kathy Hochul, and New York City’s current mayor, Eric Adams, and how they have called to stem the tide of mass migration.
"I mean, if I didn’t know who was talking, I would have thought they’d be Republicans," Maher quipped.
"Yeah. But they didn’t stop them, Bill. They could have stopped them," Cuomo said. Maher agreed.
"The governor was saying she didn’t want them outside of New York City, but the mayor could have said no, the governor could have said no," Cuomo continued. "Many mayors and governors said no. But New York was more of the ideological left, ‘All are welcome.’ And now we’re finding out, 200,000 people later, you needed a plan. You needed to know what to do with these people. And that’s where you failed."
A spokesperson for Mayor Adams' office disputed Cumo's comments, telling Fox News Digital,"These comments are simply not true. As we’ve said hundreds of times, and as every elected official — past or present — should understand, Mayor Adams has no legal ability to turn busses away arriving in New York City."
"We have, however, had a legal obligation to provide shelter to more than 205,000 migrants who have come through our care since the spring of 2022 with little support from the federal government," the spokesperson added. "Still, New York City has led the nation in managing this national humanitarian crisis, with more than 65 percent of those who have come through our care moving out of our shelter system. While we are grateful for the help our state and federal partners have provided thus far, we have been clear that we need more. We need meaningful financial help, a national resettlement strategy, and we need the federal government to finish the job they started by allowing the hundreds of thousands of people they let into this country the legal right to immediately work."
Hochul replaced Cuomo as governor after he resigned in 2021 amid a slew of sexual harassment allegations. She was re-elected in 2022 in a closer-than-expected race against Republican Lee Zeldin.
Hochul's office did not immediately reply to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.
