what to know
- Hundreds of asylum seekers who stood outside the city’s arrival reception center for days waiting for a place to sleep, if one is available, are no longer there.
- City sources and witnesses say the asylum seekers were woken up Thursday morning, processed and moved to another place with a bed.
- City workers removed barricades outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown where hundreds of migrants had been waiting for nearly a week.
NEW YORK — Hundreds of asylum seekers who stood outside the city’s arrival reception center for days waiting for a place to sleep, if one is available, are no longer there.
City sources and witnesses say the asylum seekers were woken up Thursday morning, processed and moved to another place with a bed.
City workers removed barricades outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown where hundreds of migrants had been waiting for nearly a week.
City sources say they don’t expect another line to form, at least not anytime soon, as for now they have at least managed to find enough space to prevent more migrants from sleeping rough.
The City Council says it is insulting to suggest that it is a political stunt on their part to let a line of refugees form several days in the street. But city officials were drawing a line in the sand this week when, in particular, they stopped guaranteeing that they would continue to build more and more shelters for migrants as soon as they arrived.
Many of the immigrants sleeping on the downtown streets across from the Roosevelt Hotel at East 45th Street and Madison Avenue, most of whom are single men, said their place in line did not advance for days.
Time has stood still for men like José Gregorio, who on Wednesday waited in the same place where News 4 found him two days earlier.
“I was here almost 24 hours ago and the line hasn’t grown. It’s the same number of people for the last 24 hours, so it seems like they keep these people for whatever reason,” she said.
City officials confirmed that immigrants could soon be living in other iconic areas of the city, including places like Central Park.
“Everything is on the table,” New York Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said Wednesday. “As of July 30, we have 107,900 people in our care, including 56,600 asylum seekers. More than 95,600 people have passed through our system since last spring.”
According to the city’s tracking, more than 2,300 migrants entered its system in just one week between July 24 and 30.
Luis García told News 4 that he is happy to have food and water, and that sleeping on the street for two and a half days is not that bad because he has slept on the street since he left Venezuela.
Even if some of the new arrivals don’t mind waiting on the street, the Legal Aid Society says the conditions violate the city’s right to housing. The City Council said the focus should be on the lack of state and government assistance, rather than targeting Mayor Eric Adams.
“His administration has doubled and tripled strategies that don’t work and never did, but one thing that has changed is the mayor’s rhetoric. It’s not welcoming anymore,” said Murad Awawdeh of the New York Immigration Coalition.
City officials denied that leaving people in line is a ploy to send a message to the federal government or migrants at the border that New York has no space.
