Migrants outside The Watson hotel in Manhattan have moved after a three-day standoff, Romney Smith reports.
What to Know
- The city is set to open its sixth Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center at a hotel in the Financial District to temporarily serve asylum seekers arriving to New York City from border states, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.
- According to Adams, the new center will open at the Holiday Inn Manhattan -- Financial District in an effort to address the influx of migrants and the crisis it has created in the city's shelters.
- The estimated number of asylum seekers that have arrived in the city since last spring surpasses more than 44,000, the city said.
The city is set to open its sixth Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center at a hotel in the Financial District to temporarily serve asylum seekers arriving to New York City from border states, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.
According to Adams, the new center will open at the Holiday Inn Manhattan -- Financial District in an effort to address the influx of migrants and the crisis it has created in the city's shelters.
As the estimated number of asylum seekers that have arrived in the city since last spring surpasses more than 44,000, the center will provide 492 rooms to assist adult families and single adult women, and provide them with a range of services, in addition to ensuring they can reach their final desired destination, if that destination is not New York City.
“With more than 44,000 asylum seekers arriving in the last 10 months alone, we have helped provide shelter and support to nearly as many asylum seekers as the number of New Yorkers we already had in our shelter system when we first came into office,” Adams said. “We continue to meet all our moral obligations, serving those arriving with dignity and care, but we remain in serious need of additional support from our federal partners, including a real decompression strategy to slow this influx. This sixth Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center will provide hundreds of asylum seekers with a place to stay, access support, and get to their final destination.”
Since this humanitarian migrant crisis began, the city has had to rapidly manage the arrival of buses from border states with virtually no coordination from the states sending them. This has meant the opening of 83 hotels as emergency shelters and five other humanitarian relief centers to date, standing up navigation centers to connect asylum seekers with critical resources, enrolling children in public schools through Project Open Arms, and more.
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“I’m proud our city continues to meet the challenge of supporting asylum seekers during this unprecedented humanitarian crisis,” said New York City Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol. “The opening of the latest Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center delivers on the promise to aid and provide various resources for over 44,000 individuals and families who have arrived in the city seeking a better life.”
Aside from the announcement surrounding the latest Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center, the city recently turned a cruise ship terminal into a shelter and services hub for asylum-seekers.
The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal will have room, food, medical care and other services for 1,000 single men until it reverts to the cruise business in springtime, the mayor's office said last month. Its first occupants moved from nother relief center located at a hotel, which will switch to accommodating asylum-seeking families with children.
The announcement surrounding the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal sparked controversy among migrants and activists.
A three-day-long shelter standoff outside a midtown Manhattan hotel came to an end, with with dozens of migrants having reluctantly moved to a Brooklyn mega shelter — but that's not where all of them ended up.
Asylum seekers packed up their personal belongings outside the Watson Hotel Wednesday night, as police told them they had to leave. City sanitation workers came shortly after to pick up and sweep up the sidewalk on West 57th Street.
The approximately 30 migrants who had been there for days scrambled to get out of there. Most loaded their bags onto a bus, which would take them to the mega shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Some told NBC New York in Spanish that they've had enough and had no choice but to go.
The move infuriated pro-immigration activists.
"They’re forcing the migrants to leave the street, even though it’s not illegal to be on the street. And they’re forcing them to choose," said Luna Gray, of South Bronx Mutual Aid. "They know exactly what they’re doing and it’s intentional to hurt these people who have nothing."
