Four buses crossed Manhattan on Wednesday morning and turned off a busy avenue into a side street in Midtown. The names printed on the bus – “VLP Charter”, “Changing Crew” – give no hint of their mission. Only the Texas license plate gave them away.
One by one, their drivers stepped out into an unfamiliar city, some tired but smiling, others just tired: men with backpacks, women holding babies and blankets, children hanging on teddy bear. One does not wear shoes, only socks.
The city’s immigration commissioner, Manuel Castro, shakes hands with everyone. A man in a green t-shirt hits the children’s heads. The tables were strewn with snacks, toiletries, clothes, brightly colored briefcases. Envelopes offer to fill out paperwork to gain a new identity: In addition to being undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, newcomers will also join the ranks of New Yorkers homeless.
The influx of migrants to the city this spring and summer, mostly fleeing crime and the operating economies of Central and South America, has tested New York’s reputation as a world reserve. . And it shows no signs of slowing down, thanks in part to Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who decided to send truck after bus to Washington and New York. Support Democrats on border policy helped turn humanity’s normally northerly river into a wave.
New York City has long been fueled in large part by the sweat and hard work of immigrants, but the ability to keep them afloat has become increasingly difficult.
Wednesday’s arrival of 129 migrants at the Port Authority’s Bus Terminal was the largest single-day total to date in Mr Abbott’s campaign. But that’s just one part of a larger exodus of thousands: According to the city, the shelter system currently holds 4,900 asylum seekers.
The city says this is the main reason the population of its primary homeless shelter system has grown 13% since May, to 51,000. There is much debate about how much of that increase is due to migrants and how much is due to local factors such as the end of the deportation moratorium and seasonal fluctuations. But whatever the reason, the situation was dire.
Family shelters make up more than half of the city system, and by early June their vacancy rate, believed to have remained at 3%, had dropped below 1%, according to the Aid Association. legal aid, the agency that oversees conditions in shelters. . On Thursday, the society said, the vacancy figure was 0.18%, or 19 rooms available in the entire system, which holds more than 10,000 families.
The city’s initial response to the influx of migrants was marked by weeks of drifting and misdirection, deeply contradicting the rhetoric of Mayor Eric Adams. Some families slept at admissions offices in the Bronx, breaking the law. Some are separated by bureaucracy. And advocates say the city often fails to provide basic things like food, diapers and medical care.
Two weeks ago, immigrant relief groups said Mr. Adams’s team had put themselves in an effort to welcome volunteers at the Port Authority to take pictures, take food from the volunteers’ hands so the mayor could distribute it yourself. Ariadna Phillips, founder of South Bronx Mutual Aid, said: “Those on the mayor team were shouting at the refugees to smile at the mayor. Her account has been endorsed by another volunteer Take a photo standing near the mayor.
The mayor’s office denied that anything like that happened and called the volunteers’ account “a false, outrageous and unsupported anecdote.”
For much of the summer, relief groups said they had been involved to help migrants trapped and confused in the city.
“We know their shoe size, we know their medical needs, we know their court cases, where it is registered,” said Sergio Tupac Uzurin, a volunteer with NYC ICE Watch. their ICE”. “The city hasn’t done any of that.”
But in recent days, the city government has made more coordinated moves.
The welcome centers that Mr. Adams’ Office of Immigration Affairs now set up inside the Port Authority to accommodate Abbott buses have provided much-needed assistance to those arriving in New York without knowing it. where to go or what to do.
The city has rented 1,300 rooms at 13 hotels for immigrant families. As the influx of migrants is expected to continue, it issued a call for 5,000 more.
While many migrants are stuck in the spinning wheel of city bureaucracy, some who have endured the perilous and grueling journeys to the United States have found relief in navigating the system. This is relatively easy.
“Imagine we came here walking,” said Carolina Flores, 31, who fled Venezuela with her husband and four children and settled with them in a shelter in Brooklyn. “Everything is so good, a hotel and free housing – that is something that would never happen in our country.”
On Labor Day, the city is slated to open a 600-room reception center and shelter for immigrant families in Midtown that will remain open “for the next 6 to 12 months,” according to the report. a city proposal.
But another six to 12 months like last month could push the packed haven system to breaking point.
Since mid-July, the population in single-family homes has grown by 8.5 percent — well above the typical 1 percent growth during that mid-summer period, an analysis by The New York Times shows. Times shows. If this trend holds for a year, the family shelter population will nearly double, to nearly 60,000, up from the current 31,000.
Conditions at the border are unlikely to offer much relief: Number of arrests of people crossing the border in June Exceeded last year’s record set in June 10%, or 19,000 people, and migration often accelerates in the cooler months.
The city’s desire to attract these migrants as it did in previous waves reflects the fundamental fact that New York has always relied on immigrants in every sector of the workforce, from restaurants, to care health to art, technology and finance. When New Yorkers move, immigrants take their place, often doing low-wage essential jobs that others don’t want. International migration to the city plummeted in the first year of the pandemicleaving holes in the labor market that are getting worse as the city tries to recover.
But the new migrants, many of whom are arriving broken up and without the social ties that many immigrants use to quickly gain a foothold, are an unusual strain for system. The immediate need to find housing for thousands of them – New York is one of the few American cities that, by law, must provide accommodation to anyone who requests it – runs backwards protest against new homeless shelters found in neighborhoods across the city.
Miss Phillips of South Bronx Mutual Aid – said it was part of a network that has placed hundreds of new migrants in makeshift private sanctuaries, including many who have fled shelters after being harassed or attacked – said sanctuaries are operating in secrecy to avoid attracting unwanted attention.
On Friday afternoon, on the streets of Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood built by generations of immigrants, opinions were mixed about new immigrants.
Salvatore Pesaola, 52 and proud to be Italian-American, said he has noticed an overall increase in immigration in the neighborhood and that he wants them to stop coming.
“America is not a better place – our country is as bad as yours,” he said. “Why did they come here?”
Nino Juliano, 71, who emigrated from Italy in 1967 and works in construction, said of migrants, “If they want to work, they have come to the right place. If they just want help without working, they will suffer.”
The problem lies beyond finding a place to sleep for migrants. If their numbers continue to grow at the same rate, more than 10,000 children will join the shelter population in the next year. Most will be of school age, and many, if not most, will be English learners. On Friday, the school’s principal, David C. Banks, announced Project Open Arms, a plan that will provide extra help to the children of asylum seekers as they enroll in school and receive language and learning support.
The city doesn’t place a high price on its efforts to accommodate migrants, but it has begged the federal government for help in managing what Mr. Adams often calls a “humanitarian crisis.”
“We were dealing with an overloaded shelter system,” Mr. Adams said on a Caribbean Power Jam Radio talk show on Friday. “Until that help arrives, we will fulfill our obligations.”
Migrants apprehended by the Border Patrol are often brought back. But others are allowed to stay in the country and can apply for asylum – a process that takes years and is often unsuccessful. Meanwhile, they can move freely within the country, and many are taking the Texas governor’s offer to transport them to New York and Washington for free.
Not all migrants arriving in New York enter shelters; some come to live with friends and family in the area. But a large number of recent arrivals are Venezuelan, and unlike previous groups of immigrants from places like Mexico, El Salvador or Ecuador, they are less likely to form communities to join when they come.
Many migrants become invisible in the vastness of the city, but there are a few places where they congregate.
In early August, about 10 of them gathered on the steps of the Salvation Army on 14th Street in West Village, next to a kitchen that sells weekly pop-up soups run by the nonprofit City Relief. operator, which also provides socks and toiletries for anyone in need. .
Josiah Haken, chief executive officer of City Relief, says that the group’s five New York locations are serving 1,300 visitors a week, about 300 more visitors a week than spring, and that the new migrants are one of the main reasons, although he said he has also noted an increase in homelessness overall.
Some of the migrants on the Salvation Army strides brought letters they might be interested in from their shelters, essentially, “help these people”.
Newcomers’ reviews of the shelter system were not enthusiastic. Pedro Gutierrez, 30, who arrived from Venezuela on August 4 and was assigned to a shelter on Wards Island, said: “I don’t feel good at the shelter because I’m gay. “Some people there are saying bad things about me, harassing me.”
Dixon Arambulet, who also recently arrived from Venezuela and is staying at the same shelter, said he found it difficult to sleep.
“People are always smoking, drinking and fighting,” said Arambulet, 30, a barber in his hometown. He said he slept with his head in his backpack to prevent someone from stealing his papers.
Primarily, Mr. Arambulet said, he needed a job to get out of the shelter. A week later, he still hasn’t found anyone.
“I went out today and a little boy told me he was going to talk to a man to clean a building – sweep and pick up trash,” he wrote on Friday in a text message. . “He said he’d let me know.”
