Male asylum seekers camping out in tents outside of the Watson Hotel refusing to leave. Gaby Acevedo reports.
A group of migrants being housed at a Manhattan hotel refused to be transferred to a new facility at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, leading to protests involving dozens of people Sunday night into Monday morning.
Earlier this month the city said it would turn the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal into a temporary shelter for 1,000 single men, and on Sunday officials began relocating migrants from midtown's Watson Hotel to the cruise terminal.
But according to local activists aiding the migrants, some of the first men transported saw the conditions at the terminal and immediately turned around and came back, demanding to be let back into the Watson.
"Very basic beds, head to foot, no space in between them, there's four bathrooms in the entire facility for a thousand beds," Sergio Uzurin told reporters outside the hotel Sunday night. "They've described that there's only food during limited hours and that sometimes the water runs out - and importantly, also, it's cold in there."
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox.> Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
As of Monday morning, a crowd was still camped out outside the Watson, trying to get back inside. (Obtenga toda la información más reciente en español aquí.)
The city defended the terminal facility and said the space at the Watson was needed to deal with the huge influx of migrant families being bussed to the city from the border.
"More than 42,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since last spring and we continue to surpass our moral obligations as we provide asylum seekers with shelter, food, health care, education, and a host of other services.The facilities at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal will provide the same services as every other humanitarian relief center in the city, and the scheduled relocations to Brooklyn Cruise Terminal this weekend took place as planned. We remain in serious need of support from both our state and federal governments," City Hall said in a statement.
Last summer Texas officials began bussing asylum-seeking border crossers almost daily from local facilities to New York City, whose right-to-shelter laws mean the city has to house all of the migrants.
The influx has stretched the city's infrastructure to the breaking point, leading Mayor Eric Adams to recently suggest it was close to not being able to accommodate any more people. As of last Thursday, according to the city Department of Homeless Services, nearly 70,000 people were in city-backed shelters, including more than 16,000 single adult men.
(The number includes both migrants, as well as the local homeless population.)
