NEW YORK – Days after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called on New York City’s leadership to clean up the city’s subway system, Mayor Eric Adams extended an invitation asking Duffy to experience firsthand the issues plaguing the crime-ridden transit hub. 

On Friday, Adams and Duffy went underground, boarding the BQE line in Brooklyn and riding the subway into Manhattan alongside NYPD Chief of Transit Joseph Gulotta as the federal government vows to aid the city with its crime prevention. 

Adams praised the federal government for its help in cracking down on subway crime, but condemned Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration’s apparent hesitation to roll out new initiatives aimed at the MTA. 

Mayor Eric Adams swipes into a subway turnstile alongside Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in Brooklyn, New York on Friday, April 4, 2025. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)

“I was sharing with the Secretary [that] the cause we’re having in Albany [is] involuntary movement,” said Adams, a Democrat who announced his intention this week to seek re-election as an independent. “Homeless individuals who need care, or the support we need from our state lawmakers to see [police] carry out on the ground.” 

The Hochul administration and the MTA did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Commuters travel through a subway tunnel in midtown Manhattan on Monday, March 11, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)

Duffy and Adams signaled their administrations would continue to work together to combat crime within the city, essentially removing the governor as the middleman between the city and federal government. 

“I think Albany has to think deeply about how far we have to go in order to stop [crime],” Duffy said. “That’s more resources, that’s more tools that Albany has to give [the NYPD] to arrest people. [The federal government] gives a lot of money, and for us, we’re partners in the process.”