City struggles to solve migrant crisis
NEW YORK — Since the governors of Texas and Florida began sending migrants north in acts of political theater last spring, this city has received close to 44,000 asylum-seekers, a number greater than the populations of Soho and Tribeca combined. According to City Hall, there have been 12,000 new arrivals during the past month alone.
Although New York has welcomed great numbers of immigrants into its ecosystem each year for centuries — there are more than 3 million foreignborn people living in the city now, responsible for close to one-fourth of the city’s gross domestic product — it has not confronted a situation where so many have come in such rapid sequence without the traditional pathways to integration.
Many have arrived here by perverse happenstance in recent months. Whether they have ended up in New York against their will or because of departures made in desperation and haste — they are without the sort of plans accompanying a more deliberate resettlement.
This is unprecedented territory.
The depth and severity of the crisis, unfolding in the midst of the city’s housing emergencies, cannot be overstated — it is as if two natural disasters were occurring simultaneously. When Eric Adams took office as mayor in January 2022, before the influx of migrants from the border began, there were 45,000 people in the shelter system. It has since grown by 71 percent, to 77,000.
The city has come under fire in recent days for a decision to move several hundred people from a midtown hotel, where it has been housing asylum-seekers, to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, a 180,000-square-foot building on the Red Hook waterfront. The idea was to prioritize hotel space for families with children by moving single men into a congregate setting. The terminal was vacant and would not have returned to its official use until cruise ship season began again in the spring.
Activists quickly objected, citing similarities to a “detention center.” The city blamed them for riling up occupants of the hotel slated for relocation, some of whom slept outside in protest rather than move to the new relief center until police swept the encampment Wednesday night. The terminal had 1,000 cots available.
The Red Hook facility, on Wednesday, offered tours to political officials in an effort to quiet the noise. Among the first visitors were Brooklyn’s borough president, Antonio Reynoso, and several members of the City Council. They said that, contrary to early claims, the building was, in fact, warm, although the men staying there had to walk outside to take
showers in mobile units, because propane heating units could not be installed in the terminal.
Council member Shahana Hanif was the first to express a concern about the lack of privacy. She and colleagues wished the administration had done more to allay the anxieties of men who did not know what the Red Hook move would mean. After so many of them had experienced so much trauma in
their long treks, often by foot to the border, they harbored a reasonable fear that they were being taken to a place from which they would eventually be deported. But the facility was safe, Reynoso said.
“New York City has already done more than nearly any other city in the nation to support this influx of asylum-seekers, but our resources are limited, and we need support,” Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for
the mayor’s office, wrote in an email. “If corrective measures are not taken soon, we may very well be forced to cut or curtail programs New Yorkers rely on. These are not choices we want to make, but they may become necessary, and we must be honest with New Yorkers about what we’re facing.”