Authorities Meet With Migrants as Group Continues to Protest Order to Leave Manhattan Hotel

1 年前

Manuel Castro, the Commissioner of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, met with a group of asylum seekers on Tuesday, January 31, as it continued to push back against the city’s attempt to relocate them to a shelter in Brooklyn.

Earlier this month, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced his plan to move single men from the Watson Hotel in midtown Manhattan to a new shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which can house 1,000 people.

This footage posted to the NYC Immigrant Affairs Twitter page shows tables, couches, and TVs set up inside the Brooklyn shelter.

A group of migrants set up camp outside the midtown hotel on January 29, refusing to follow city officials’ orders to relocate to the Brooklyn shelter, according to local news reports. A migrant told local news that they did not want to move to the Brooklyn shelter, citing a lack of heat.

Adams visited the shelter in Brooklyn and said it had “healthy food” and was heated.

A representative of Make the Road NY, an organization that says it advocates for immigrants and “working-class people of color” in New York state, said they "condemn the City’s action to force asylum-seekers to move to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.

“The city must treat recently arrived people as just that – people, who need stability to have a functional day-to-day life, not puzzle pieces to be moved around arbitrarily,” the statement said.

According to local news reports, single adult men staying at the Watson Hotel are being moved to make space for families. Credit: NYC Immigrant Affairs via Storyful