What to Know
- The city is set to open its sixth Emergency Humanitarian Aid and Response Center at a hotel in the Financial District to temporarily serve asylum seekers arriving in the Big Apple from the border states, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.
- According to Adams, the new center will open at the Holiday Inn Manhattan – Financial District hotel in an effort to address the number of immigrants and the crisis it has created in the city’s shelters.
- The estimated number of asylum seekers who have arrived in the city since last spring exceeds 44,000.
NEW YORK — The city is set to open its sixth Emergency Humanitarian Aid and Response Center at a hotel in the Financial District to temporarily serve asylum seekers arriving in the Big Apple from border states, the city announced Tuesday. Mayor Eric Adams.
According to Adams, the new center will open at the Holiday Inn Manhattan – Financial District hotel in an effort to address the number of immigrants and the crisis it has created in the city’s shelters.
With the estimated number of asylum seekers arriving in the city since last spring exceeding 44,000, the center will provide 492 rooms to assist adult families and single adult women, providing them with a range of services, as well as ensuring that they can reach their desired final 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 we had New Yorkers already in our shelter system when we first took office. Adams said. “We continue to meet all our moral obligations, serving those arriving with dignity and care, but we continue to seriously need additional support from our federal partners, including a real decompression strategy to stem this influx. This sixth Emergency Aid and Humanitarian Aid Center will provide hundreds of asylum seekers with a place to stay, access support and reach their final destination.”
Since this humanitarian migrant crisis began, the city has had to quickly manage the arrival of buses from border states with virtually no coordination from the sending states. This has meant the opening of 83 hotels as emergency shelters and another five humanitarian aid centers to date, the creation of navigation centers to connect asylum seekers with critical resources, the enrollment of children in public schools through the Open Arms Project and more.
“I am proud that our city continues to rise to 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 Emergency Humanitarian Aid and Response Center fulfills the promise of helping and providing various resources to more than 44,000 individuals and families who have come to the city in search of a better life.”
Immigration crisis in NYC
The federal government is sending asylum seekers to New York City in hopes of a better life, but the system has left many on the streets and struggling.
In addition to the announcement surrounding the latest relief center, the city recently converted a cruise ship terminal into a shelter and service center for asylum seekers.
The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal will have room, board, medical care and other services for 1,000 single men until it returns to cruise business in the spring, the mayor’s office said last month. Its first occupants moved from another relief center located in a hotel, which came to house asylum-seeking families with children.
The announcement about the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal sparked controversy among migrants and activists.
A three-day standoff at a shelter outside a midtown Manhattan hotel has come to an end, with dozens of migrants moving into a Brooklyn mega-shelter, but that’s not where they all ended up.
The asylum seekers packed up their personal belongings outside the Watson Hotel on Wednesday night as police told them they had to leave. City sanitation workers arrived shortly thereafter to pick up and sweep the sidewalk on West 57th Street.
The 30 or so migrants who had been there for days rushed out. Most loaded their bags onto a bus, which would take them to the mega-shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Some told our sister network NBC New York in Spanish that they had had enough and had no choice but to leave.
The move angered pro-immigration activists.
“They are forcing migrants off the street, even though it is not illegal to be on the street. And they are being forced 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.”