NEW YORK – Organizations that offer food to immigrant asylum seekers in New York City have had to cut this aid due to a lack of resources. This while hundreds of immigrants have had to sleep on the streets due to the lack of accommodation and shelters.
What is the situation
A large number of asylum seekers have been outside the city’s arrival intake center since Friday and have had to sleep on the sidewalk while they wait to be assigned a shelter.
According to sources who spoke with our sister chain NBC 4 New York buses seen Monday morning parked in front of the Roosevelt Hotel in East 45th Street and Madison Avenue, were on site to help people get off the streets while they wait to hear a room, a process that can take an average of 24 to 48 hours. However, in some cases, the migrants have been waiting for five or six days.
Jefferson, a migrant from Colombia, told News4 New York on Saturday that his bed for the past four days has been a piece of cardboard. The dream sold on social media that she would get a bed and a job in New York City has turned into a nightmare that she now says she regrets. Jefferson now has a message for other Colombians thinking about making the trip to the United States: “Stay there. Don’t come here.”
Mohamed Sale, who arrived in Manhattan on Saturday from the West African nation of Mauritania, also has his regrets.
“For now I regret coming. Maybe when I take a hotel and stay for two months to get back on my feet, maybe I won’t regret it,” he told News 4 New York.
For days, Mayor Eric Adams has sounded the alarm that the city has run out of space for asylum seekers.
With an average of 300 to 500 people arriving per day, the city is taking drastic new measures, like giving unaccompanied immigrants already in the city’s care 60 days notice to find another roof over their heads.
The city says it will always give housing priority to families with children. In response to images of dozens of migrants sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel intake center, a spokesperson for Adams told News4 New York who issued the following statement:
“As we have said for some time now, with over 93,000 asylum seekers entering our intake system since last spring, our teams run out of space every day and we do our best to offer placements where we have space available. Children and families continue to be prioritized and a bed is found for them each night. While last night we at least offered all adults a temporary place to wait off the sidewalks, some may have opted to sleep outside, and in all honesty, New Yorkers may continue to see that more and more as hundreds of asylum seekers continue to arrive every day. This is the heartbreaking reality and something our teams have worked tirelessly to avoid, but while our compassion is limitless, our resources are not. We still desperately need help from our state and federal partners. In the meantime, we encourage immigrants to accept us at available locations outside of New York City as they become available.”.
Yolanda Vásquez has details.
New York City asked for federal help to address and deal with the humanitarian crisis of the daily arrival of hundreds of migrants seeking asylum. Mayor Eric Adams met with US Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and New York congressmen in Washington last week to discuss that aid.
These applicants waiting at the Roosevelt Hotel seek to be part of the 56,200 asylum seekers who are under the care of New York City, which has 192 shelters and 13 humanitarian aid centers that, due to the crisis, cannot cope. That’s why city officials say New Yorkers will likely see more scenes like this where some people have opted to sleep on the streets given the current constraints on space and resources to handle the continued arrival of migrants in the city than they are desperate for help.
So far in 2023, the city has spent more than $1.5 billion caring for migrants and they expect that by the end of 2025 they will have spent $4.3 billion.
