'They are fed up': Dem mayor's office demands solution on key issue after voters sent 'resounding message'

The Biden Department of Homeland Security is launching an ICE Portal app in December that will allow migrants to skip their in-person check-ins at an ICE office and instead check in with immigration officials via an app on a phone or computer.

The app reportedly has severe glitching issues and does not track a migrant's location if he or she is using an Android phone or laptop. Further, the app does not check migrants for past arrests or outstanding warrants and allows them to opt out of or contest government orders to undergo electronic tracking.

Kayla Altus, a spokesperson for Adams, told Fox News Digital that "cities should not have to carry the cost and burden of a national problem."

"For decades, Washington has endlessly talked about comprehensive reform, but delivered nothing of substance," she said. "This election, the American people sent a resounding message: they are fed up with our broken immigration system."  

She said the election, which saw a blowout victory for former President Trump and Republicans gaining unified control of Congress, gave the federal government a clear mandate to fix the immigration problem.

"Democrats and Republicans must come together to pass meaningful immigration reform for the first time in four decades," she said. "That is what's best for the American people, as well as the immigrants who come here, seeking the opportunity to build a better life and have a shot at the American Dream."

Down in the border city of Laredo, Texas, Mayor Victor Trevino told Fox News Digital that he is working with state and Mexican authorities to prepare for the possibility of another migrant surge before Trump takes office. 

He said that although the city currently has "adequate" resources for everyday legal crossings, "no community is equipped enough to handle unnatural surges." 

Trevino noted that the city is not equipped for a surge in migrant children as Laredo "does not have a pediatric intensive care unit." 

Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital that other sanctuary cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver are also struggling with the fiscal costs of the migrant surge. He said that in many instances, illegal migrants are even crowding out resources meant for citizens.

Camarota pointed to testimony he gave to the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs in September, in which he listed the fiscal costs to individual sanctuary cities: $12 billion in New York over the next three years on housing, food, health care and other services for recently arrived illegal immigrants, $361 million in Chicago and $36.4 million in Washington, D.C., in 2023, and $180 million in Denver in 2024.

"The real policy that would save the cities' money is robust enforcement that both increased removals, made people go home, and encourage people to go home on their own," he said. "If you're increasing removals and you've increased just normal outmigration, you could really cut into these numbers and start to save some real money."

"Only ICE knows for sure how often someone who's released by a sanctuary has been subsequently arrested for another crime," she said. "There's a human cost to the sanctuary policies and there is no reasonable law enforcement or public safety or even community trust justification for having this policy. It is political and it has to stop."