2023-08-03 03:18:02
NEW YORK (AP) — For days now, recently arrived immigrant immigrants have waited day and night outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, hoping to be assigned a bed in the city’s shelter system. And for weeks now, Mayor Eric Adams has been saying that there is no room anywhere and he is trying to prevent the arrival of more foreigners.
The scene outside the hotel turned migrant shelter and intake center highlights that saturation in the homeless shelter system has reached record levels. City officials and activists alike say the situation is heartbreaking.
But some accuse city officials of cashing in on the lines outside the Roosevelt Hotel for a campaign to demand more resources from the state and federal governments to deal with the crisis and discourage more migrants from entering the United States across the border. south.
“Mayor Adams should not be using asylum seekers as a tool to gain the attention of the Biden administration or discourage asylum seekers from coming to New York,” said Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. York.
He added that the city must do more to free up space in shelters and keep migrants off the streets. “It’s hard to imagine that there aren’t enough beds to house the people the Adams administration is leaving on the streets,” Awawdeh told The Associated Press in a statement.
In a press conference on Thursday, a deputy mayor rejected that assertion.
“I don’t think I or anyone else in this administration would use people for politicking,” said Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom.
He stated that the city has been conducted “with humanity and compassion”, and that the shelter system is at a “breaking point”.
City officials say the number of migrants who have arrived since spring 2022 is approaching 100,000, overwhelming the capacity of the shelter system designed to accommodate tens of thousands fewer people.
New York City is required by a unique court order to provide emergency housing to anyone who requests it, but city officials have said in recent weeks that the number of migrants seeking asylum in the United States has made it difficult to comply with that responsibility.
Although the number of migrants crossing the border has decreased in recent months, buses full of them continue to arrive every day. Authorities said that just last week, 2,300 more migrants arrived seeking shelter in the city.
Adams sent representatives to the border last month to hand out flyers to migrants informing them that shelter space is no longer guaranteed and that both accommodation and food in New York are expensive. The city urged them to consider other cities.
Outside the Roosevelt Hotel recently, migrant Miguel Jaramillo was talking about what it was like to sleep on the street while waiting for a bed, and said he was willing to put up with the process.
On another day, security guards ordered the migrants not to speak to journalists. During an interview with a migrant, a guard motioned for him not to make statements, first putting a finger to his lips and then running it across his throat like a knife.
The migrant, who had been talking about his arduous journey to the United States and his hope for a better life, immediately stopped talking.
“That’s clearly a threat,” said Joshua Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society in New York.
“There is no question that the city could create additional space for people who are on the sidewalk,” he said. Governments at the state and federal levels should also do more, she added.
Adams, who is a Democrat, has insisted that the city do everything it can, like renting entire hotels to house migrants and opening various shelters.
In a desperate attempt to increase housing space, city officials are considering setting up camp on an island in the East River, though it closed a similar facility nearly a year ago. And soon they will open a new shelter in the parking lot of a psychiatric hospital in Queens, which will have about 1,000 beds for single men, who make up the majority of the migrants arriving.
However, Adams’s severe words suggest that more migrants will have to sleep outdoors.
“Things are not going to get better. From now on we go downhill. There is no more space,” Adams said Monday, who also vowed not to let sidewalk camping become a problem in the city. “I can guarantee you that this city is not going to look like others where there are tents all over the streets.”
Goldfein and others accused the mayor and the city of having changed their tune, going from “we’re going to serve people with dignity and respect, to we’re going to treat people too badly to send a message.”
Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor, countered that the city will continue to be compassionate.
“We’re trying to say that if fewer people came through the front door, maybe we could catch up a little bit,” he added.
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Associated Press writer Julie Walker contributed to this report.
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