New York, May 15 (EFE).- New York City will set up at least three schools to temporarily house migrants who constantly arrive in the city from the country’s southern border, according to various local media reports today and in the absence of confirmation. Mayor’s official.
It will be the gymnasiums of these schools that serve as temporary accommodation, as the Mayor’s Office lifted the minimum requirements that a place must meet to become a shelter for homeless people last week.
In fact, one of the schools (PS 188, in the Brooklyn district) has already installed migrants (all of them adults) in its gym, amid protests from the parents of students, which is reported today by the CBS television channel.
Two other schools – one in the Williamsburg neighborhood, also in Brooklyn, and the other in Staten Island – have already been selected as temporary shelters, and two more are “under study, according to the ABC7 channel.
The emergency measure implemented to respond to the wave of migrants arriving in New York City – more than 65,000 since last August – is opposed not only by parents of students, but also by teacher unions, who criticize the mayor Eric Adams for protecting migrants before children.
Other criticisms come from the fact that the Mayor’s Office has not clearly communicated these decisions nor has it negotiated with the management of the schools on specific issues.
The opening of schools is the latest measure after the city has opened 140 emergency shelters, many of them hotels dedicated to this purpose, the last of them at the once luxurious Roosevelt Hotel in the very center of Manhattan.
The hotels are reserved for families with children, while young people or adults without children are sent to the other hostels.
The arrival of migrants with children is also putting great pressure on the New York school system, which has had to open additional places in public schools and even create new classes for Spanish-speaking children, given their large number.
New York City is the only city in the United States that by law is obliged to provide a roof to anyone who does not have one, and it is the argument that some Republican leaders -such as the governors of Texas, Greg Abbot, or of Florida, Ron DeSantis- are using to promote in one way or another the transfer of emigrants to the Big Apple.
